14 DAY TRIAL // With last week’s decision to have all the documents obtained from Sony in November’s Sony Hack in a searchable database, thanks to WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, came the revelation that Ben Affleck had a slave-owning ancestor that he didn’t want the world to know about.
So when he agreed to appear on PBS’ Finding Your Roots and this bit came up, he and his people made sure that that host / producer Henry Louis Gates Jr. edited it out. The story blew up with the release of the Sony documents because Gates contacted Sony CEO Michael Lynton as to the course of action he must take.
Not an act of censorship, but of shame and embarrassment
Even though Gates himself wrote to Lynton that giving in to Affleck’s demand would “open the door for censorship,” since the show had never deliberately edited out a controversial piece of information, Affleck says that this was not an act of censorship.
In a post to his Facebook feed, he finally addresses the controversy and apologizes for having what he describes as a more or less knee-jerk reaction. He was ashamed, he goes on to say. He was embarrassed even though he knew that he shouldn’t feel this way since he had no control over his past.
At the same time, he wanted this part of his life to be kept out of the public, so he told producers that he would rather it weren’t included on the show. He didn’t demand for it to be cut, he insists, even though the leaked emails would have you believe differently.
He merely “suggested” that he’d prefer it if it weren’t included. In the end, it was the producers’ decision. Then again, he adds, it’s not like this show is a news program, so why all the fuss about his attempts at keeping something a secret?
You can see his full post below.
“To clarify, because I see this story being framed as ‘censorship’ on some sites, when I told Skip I was uneasy about the slave owner, he told me he had not included it in his preliminary cut because there wasn't much detail - a name and no details, so he wasn't going with it to begin with,” Affleck adds in a comment. “He also told me they would do a book later with a more complete story, and I said I would be happy to participate and talk about the issues more broadly.”
So basically, even though Affleck is apologizing, he’s also saying that he’s not to blame.
The leaked emails contradict him
However, if you look at the leaked emails, you will notice several discrepancies between Affleck’s side of the story and Gates’, which means either one must be lying. For starters, Gates was told to edit that bit of information out in no uncertain terms, and he was really torn about it.
He didn’t understand why this was a thing, since the ancestor “wasn't even a bad guy [and] we don't demonize him at all.” At the same time, he understood Affleck’s image stood to suffer from the revelation, but he thought that he, Affleck, was being advised by the wrong kind of people.
Gates even offered to fly to Detroit to talk to Affleck about it, but he never got an answer in this sense. He was opposed to the idea of caving in to a guest’s demands, because he knew the show would lose credibility if it ever got out.
Then there’s the timeline of events that seems to contradict Affleck: his episode was shot in January, but he waited until July to make his demand, which suggests that he received counsel in this regard in the meantime. So this couldn’t have possibly been a knee-jerk reaction, but a well thought-out move to safeguard his image at all costs.
