PBS Suspends ‘Finding Your Roots’
Citing Ben Affleck’s ‘Improper Influence,’ PBS Suspends ‘Finding Your Roots’ An investigation that revealed that Ben Affleck pressured producers into leaving out details about his family prompted PBS to postpone a future season of "Finding Your Roots." PBS said on Wednesday that it was postponing a future season of “Finding Your Roots” after an investigation revealed that the actor Ben Affleck pressured producers into leaving out details about an ancestor of his who owned slaves. PBS will not run the show’s third season until staffing changes are made, including hiring a fact checker, it said. The show, which is hosted by the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., traces family histories of celebrities and public figures, and has run for two seasons. The concern about Mr. Affleck’s relative surfaced in the WikiLeaks cache of hacked Sony emails after Mr. Gates asked a Sony executive for advice about a “megastar” who wanted to omit a detail about a slave-ownin...