Taylor Swift has been getting some attention lately for using her influence to get Apple to change their policy on paying musicians during the free trial period for their new streaming service, but not all celebrities use their powers to help out the little guy. Thanks to the Sony hack, news came out a few months back that after the PBS docu-series”Finding Your Roots” discovered that Ben Affleck had a slave-owning ancestor, Affleck asked them not to include that information in the final program. Now, the New York Times is reporting that after an internal investigation, PBS is suspending the program, saying “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.'” They plan to hire a fact checker and a genealogist before moving forward with the show. Henry Louis Gates, who hosts the show and defended the decision to exclude the slave-owning ancestor in the episode, said in a statement, “I sincerely regret not discussing my editing rationale with our partners at PBS and WNET and I apologize for putting PBS and its member stations in the position of having to defend the integrity of their programming.”
Ben Affleck scandal gets PBS show suspended
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