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posted by cmn32480 on Friday June 26 2015, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-was-once-private-is-now-public dept.

PBS has postponed a third season of "Finding Your Roots" following an investigation into the editorial process of the pop genealogy TV program. The show is hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (the same professor who was invited to a "beer summit" by President Obama in 2009), and tracks the family history of celebrities and other public figures using historical documents as well as Y-chromosome DNA, mitochondrial DNA, and autosomal DNA analyses.

The show's editorial process came under scrutiny after an email exchange between Gates and a Sony executive was discovered within the Sony emails and documents posted by WikiLeaks. Gates asked for advice on how to deal with actor Ben Affleck, who was pressuring producers to omit the fact that one of his ancestors owned slaves:

"We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found," Mr. Gates wrote to a Sony executive, Michael Lynton, in July 2014. Mr. Gates added that this would violate PBS rules, and "once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand."

When the episode was broadcast in October, it did not mention the slave-owning ancestor. After the emails were posted to WikiLeaks, Mr. Gates said that producers had discovered more interesting ancestors from Mr. Affleck's family, including a relative from the Revolutionary War and an occult enthusiast. Mr. Affleck said in April that he was "embarrassed" when he discovered that he was related to a slave owner. "I didn't want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves," Mr. Affleck wrote on Facebook.

In the investigation, PBS said that producers violated network standards by letting Mr. Affleck have "improper influence" and "by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck's efforts to affect program content." The network said that before the third season of "Finding Your Roots" can broadcast, the show needs to make some staffing changes, including the addition of a fact checker and an "independent genealogist" to review the show's contents. PBS also said that it had not made a decision about whether to commit to a fourth season of the show.

In other recent WikiLeaks news, the Saudi govt. is telling citizens to ignore "fabricated documents", such as those describing diplomatic immunity fueling Bahrain booze runs in the "dry" country, and the belief that Iran shipped centrifuges to Sudan in 2012.

Wired declares that "WikiLeaks Is Back" following Espionnage Élysée. French President François Hollande has held an emergency meeting to discuss claims that the U.S. spied on French Presidents from 2006 to 2012.


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  • (Score: 1) by Flyingmoose on Friday June 26 2015, @02:28PM

    by Flyingmoose (4369) <mooseNO@SPAMflyingmoose.com> on Friday June 26 2015, @02:28PM (#201515) Homepage

    WikiLeaks announced a while ago (a few years maybe?) that they had a trove of documents from one of the big banks. I don't like the government or Sony much, but I feel like the banks were really the ones to blame for recession we're just now coming out of.

    So why is it that they released all of this other stuff but nothing about the banks? Did they pay off WikiLeaks or something? Out of everything WikiLeaks obtained, I was most looking forward to hearing about the results of the bank documents, especially since the leaker went to the trouble and personal risk to get them in the first place.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Friday June 26 2015, @04:38PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 26 2015, @04:38PM (#201579)

    Here's some speculation written five years ago that is probably still relevant: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42762811 [cnbc.com]

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