Ben Affleck asked for the TV documentary Finding Your Roots to not reveal he had a slave-owning ancestor, according to leaked emails.
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks published the information, which came from when Sony Pictures was hacked last year.
The information never appeared on the programme, but both TV station PBS and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, host of the show that traces the ancestry of well-known guests, said that they did not censor the slave-owner details.
Instead, more interesting ancestors of the actor emerged and Gates chose to highlight them in October's segment featuring Affleck, they said in statements posted on the PBS website.
"For any guest, we always find far more stories about ancestors on their family trees than we ever possibly could use," Gates said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.
He said discovering slave-owning ancestors was very common in the series, and noted Ken Burns and Anderson Cooper were two guests with slave-owner relatives.
In Affleck's case, "we decided to go with the story we used about his fascinating ancestor who became on occultist following the Civil War. This guy's story was totally unusual - we had never discovered someone like him before," he said.
Affleck, the award-winning actor and filmmaker (Good Will Hunting and Argo has organised humanitarian work in Africa.
The email chain between Gates and Sony Pictures co-chairman and chief executive Michael Lynton was part of a trove of hundreds of thousands of emails and documents from last year's Sony hack that WikiLeaks put into a searchable online archive.
In their email exchange, Gates asks for advice on how to handle Affleck's request.
"Here's my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors - the fact that he owned slaves.
"Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?" Gates wrote on July 22, 2014.
Mr Lynton replies that it all depends on who knows that the information was in the documentary already.
"I would take it out if no one knows, but if it gets out that you are editing the material based on this kind of sensitivity then it gets tricky. Again, all things being equal I would definitely take it out," he wrote.
After going back and forth, the two seem to decide censoring the information is a bad idea, with Gates writing later on July 22 that if the public learned of it, "It would embarrass him and compromise our integrity. I think he is getting very bad advice" and adding: "Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand."
Affleck is never mentioned in the emails, but is instead referred to as a "megastar" and "Batman". He was filming Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice at the time.
When the segment aired on October 14, Gates focused on the occultist, a Revolutionary War relative and Affleck's mother, who was a "freedom rider" in 1964.
A PBS spokeswoman said that PBS did not know of the exchanges between Gates, Sony and Affleck and was not part of editorial decisions made by Gates and his producers.
"It is clear from the exchange how seriously Professor Gates takes editorial integrity," PBS said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article