PBS revealed yesterday that it was postponing a future season of Finding Your Roots after evidence that the actor Ben Affleck influenced producers into leaving out details about an ancestor of his who owned slaves.
According to a New York Times story, PBS will not run the show’s third season until some staff adjustments are made, including hiring a fact checker.
The show is hosted by the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Like Who Do You Think You Are, Finding Your Roots traces family histories of celebrities and public figures. It has already run for two seasons.
The concern about Ben Affleck’s relative came to light in the WikiLeaks cache of hacked Sony emails. Mr. Gates had asked a Sony executive for advice about a “megastar” who wanted to leave out a detail about a slave-owning ancestor.
