House Speaker Paul Ryan participated in the upcoming 5th season of PBS’s Finding Your Roots and discovered he is 3% Ashkenazi Jewish “which about knocked his head off, to tell you the truth,” Henry Louis Gates Jr. gleefully told TV critics at TCA. Participants in the new season, launching January 8, also include…

The Rev. Al Sharpton has been appointed to the founding board of the Creative Thread Foundation, a newly formed organization dedicated to "opening doors for multicultural representation, diversity and inclusion" in the media, entertainment and communications industries. Trouble is, the founding board isn't very…

Cable network Fusion, a division of Fusion Media Group (FMG) that focuses on programming for diverse youth, has issued an open call for scripted and unscripted television projects. The emphasis is on generating new opportunities for young storytellers of different ethnic backgrounds, races, sexual orientations…

When Larry David debuted his Bernie Sanders impersonation on Saturday Night Live, the similarities were uncanny. The Curb Your Enthusiasm star looked, talked and walked almost exactly like the Senator. David’s impression was so good that it was kind of scary. You didn’t know where David ended and Sanders began. When…

Ana Navarro's father thought she would learn she is descended from Spanish royalty when she participated in PBS's Finding Your Roots celebrity genealogy series, "so he's still recovering," she said, after learning some of her ancestors were slaved. Writer/TV host/activist Janet Mock called it "incredibly emotional" to…

Henry Louis Gates Jr. said there is no doubt in his mind the rise of Donald Trump as the GOP presidential candidate is about the fact that, for the past nearly eight years, there has been a black family in the White House, which has driven some people in this country to distraction. Gates came to TCA to discuss his…

American Fault Line: Race And The American Ideal—Ken Burns & Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will be streamed live from the Brooklyn Academy of Music on March 16, with newly announced moderator Michel Martin, weekend host of National Public Radio’s news program All Things Considered, BAM announced today. Both speakers have…

PBS and WNET did a “good job” in their investigation about the censoring of the Ben Affleck episode of Finding Your Roots and made “sound recommendations” that send a “strong message” to all PBS program producers, PBS ombudsman Mike Getler says. But he’s not sure the steps taken will fix the basic problem brought to…

PBS has informed member stations that, despite yesterday’s apology by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and executive producer Dyllan McGee, it is pressing ahead with its investigation into Finding Your Roots’ presentation of Ben Affleck’s family tree. In a statement issued after PBS and show producing station WNET announced they…

One day after Ben Affleck wrote on Facebook that he had lobbied PBS’ Finding Your Roots producer to withhold revealing he has a slave-owning ancestor, the actor took the high road and tweeted information about the relative: Lots of people have been asking who the guy was. His name was Benjamin Cole – lived in…

Updated with Ben Affleck’s explanation: PBS and WNET have launched an investigation into Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s decision to censor his celebrity-genealogy series Finding Your Roots after getting a request from one of its “megastar” subjects. PBS and WNET’s announcement today coincides with a report from PBS ombudsman…

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY, 7 AM: Gay Talese speaks out in the New York Times. In a Letter To The Editor published this morning in the New York Times, former Times reporter Gay Talese, who covered Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery for the Paper of Record, expanded on his remarks yesterday during a…