PBS announced on Wednesday that it was postponing the third season of "Finding Your Roots" after actor Ben Affleck pressured showrunners not to disclose his ancestor who owned slaves, reports the New York Times.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. hosts the PBS show, which traces family histories of celebrities and notable people. The show has run for two seasons. The issue about Affleck's slave-owning relative came to light in the WikiLeaks cache of hacked Sony emails. Gates sought advice from a Sony executive on July 22, 2014 regarding a "megastar" who wanted to omit an ancestor from the show.

"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," Gates' leaked email to Sony CEO Michael Lynton states. "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?"

Affleck is not referred to by name, but he is nicknamed "Batman" in the email correspondence and there is also mention of Gates talking to the "megastar" on a Detroit film set. Affleck filmed "Batman v Superman" in Detroit.

The episode featuring Affleck was broadcast in October. It did not mention his slave-owning ancestor.

Affleck apologized in April for hiding the fact about his ancestor.

"I didn't want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves," Affleck reportedly wrote on Facebook.

The PBS investigation into the matter revealed that "Finding Your Roots" producers violated network standards by allowing Affleck to have "improper influence" and "by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck's efforts to affect program content."

In a statement on Wednesday, Gates said, "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."

The show's third season will not be aired until staff changes are made, including the hiring of a fact checker and "independent genealogist" to review findings, according to PBS.

PBS has not decided whether or not to commit to a fourth season of the show.