Palestinian documentary filmmaker Emad Burnat, whose Oscar-nominated film 5 Broken Cameras received funding from PBS’s POV, was detained Feb. 20 at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving in the country for Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony. The news that Burnat had been held for one and a half hours was first tweeted by friend and fellow documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Burnat later released a statement confirming that he and his family had been detained and threatened with deportation and that they had been forced to provide proof that he had been nominated for an Oscar. “Although this was an unpleasant experience, this is a daily occurrence for Palestinians, every single day, throughout the West Bank,” Burnat said.

More than five months after subpoenaing notes and outtakes from The Central Park Five, a crime documentary about the 1989 arrest and conviction of five innocent young men over the rape and assault of a jogger in Central Park, lawyers for New York City were rebuffed in their attempts to gain hold of the film’s unused footage for evidence in an ongoing federal lawsuit. The decision came on the evening of Feb. 19, as reported by the New York Times. Co-directed by Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah and longtime Burns producer David McMahon, based on extensive research from Sarah, the film was released in theaters in fall 2012 to critical acclaim and will air on PBS in April.

The third-season finale of Downton Abbey drew 8.2 million viewers for its Feb. 17 PBS broadcast, the network and WGBH announced Feb. 19. The numbers come from Nielsen and gave the episode a 5.2 household rating. The episode came in with 50 percent more viewers than the season two finale in 2012 and also drew 300,000 more fans than this year’s season premiere. Nearly 80,000 tweets were sent about the show on the night it aired, according to SocialGuide. Overall, this season of the smash-hit program enjoyed more than quadruple the average PBS primetime ratings.

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The latest in an ongoing series of Public Media Futures forums will spotlight public broadcasting’s work surrounding the arts. The Feb. 20 roundtable discussion, “The Future of Arts and Culture on Public Media,” will be hosted by the USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy in downtown Washington, D.C. The center is co-sponsoring the forums with American University’s School of Communication, publisher of Current. Confirmed speakers and participants include Alyce Myatt, director of media arts for the National Endowment for the Arts and a former PBS programming v.p.; Roger LaMay, g.m. of WXPN-FM in Philadelphia; Vincent Curren, CPB c.o.o.;

Maryland Public Television can thank the Baltimore Ravens this week for helping the station win a supply of sourdough breads and chocolate. The station laid some local cuisine on the line with San Francisco’s KQED as part of a friendly wager leading up to the Feb. 3 Super Bowl match between the Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. If Baltimore won, KQED promised to ship the bread and chocolate to MPT. If San Francisco won, MPT would send crab cakes and Bergers cookies, a Balmer fave, across the country. But despite a second-half comeback attempt from the 49ers, the birds emerged victorious, 34-31, and KQED remained true to its word.

KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., has struck the opening chords for The Organist, a monthly arts-and-culture podcast from McSweeney’s. The program is the latest collaboration between the station and the irreverent San Francisco–based publishing house, founded in 1998 by acclaimed author and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Produced by the editors of the McSweeney’s-published culture magazine The Believer, The Organist will produce 10 hourlong episodes per year covering a wide gamut of pop culture, with the help of some famous voices. The inaugural episode launched Feb. 1. The Organist will function solely as a podcast for now as it builds an audience, with KCRW providing financial support and acting as executive producers and distributors, according to Harriet Ells, the station’s program director for arts and culture programming.

Frontline and the nonprofit investigative newsroom California Watch each won George Polk Awards, the prestigious journalism honors presented annually by Long Island University. Correspondent Martin Smith and producer Michael Kirk of the pubTV investigative icon series won for coverage of “Money, Power and Wall Street.” The judges said, “In blunt, first-hand accounts, viewers were given an unprecedented look inside key decisions that affected the lives of ordinary people around the country and a play-by-play road map of what ultimately would shatter the global economy.” Assisting Smith and Kirk were producers Marcela Gaviria, Mike Wiser and Jim Gilmore. Reporter Ryan Gabrielson of California Watch won for his “Broken Shield” series, for what the judges called his “dogged persistence in exposing how California’s Office of Protective Services does an abysmal job of curbing abuse at state clinics.”

Downton Abbey Executive Producer Gareth Neame tells Entertainment Weekly that PBS’s decision to delay the season opener of Masterpiece Classic hit from September, when it airs in England, to January is “unrealistic” — yet “sensible and pragmatic.” (Here’s the interview, with this spoiler alert warning: If you haven’t yet watched the Season 3 finale that aired Sunday, back away now because he talks about it in detail.) Here’s what Neame specifically said about PBS’s scheduling decision, which is still being debated at headquarters in Crystal City: “[T]the idea that in this day and age people have to wait four months before watching a show that has aired in another part of the world is clearly unrealistic.

The elections supervisor for the boards of Pacifica’s five radio stations has recommended that the network revamp its process for selecting board members because the current system is “too costly, time consuming, factionalized and factionalizing.” In a report on the latest round of elections, which concluded in January several months behind schedule, Pacifica National Elections Supervisor Terry Bouricius described numerous flaws in a process that’s been in effect for nearly a decade. Pacifica’s elections favor “ego-driven individuals,” he wrote, and bring in votes from roughly 10 percent of the total membership of the five stations. The small percentage of those who do vote are likely not representative of the whole.

The Pacifica National Board passed a resolution barring individuals who have clashed with the network’s leadership from election to the boards of its five stations, a move that critics decried as a political witch hunt. The resolution, which passed Jan. 24 by a vote of 11–10, denies seats on Local Station Boards to three classes of people: “Individuals whose actions have been declared by a court of law to be breaches of fiduciary duty, or breaches of the duty of loyalty or the duty of care;” “Individuals who have been separated involuntarily from foundation employment for cause;” and “Individuals who have been banned from station premises due to threatening behavior or creating an unsafe environment for others.”

Maryland’s Salisbury University  is backing away from a consultant’s plan to farm out operations of its two Delmarva Public Radio stations. A proposal unveiled Feb. 14 would provide funding to WSDL in Ocean City, Md., and WSCL in Salisbury for at least three years. The proposal calls for the Salisbury University Foundation, Delmarva Public Radio’s license holder, to transfer the license to the school, said Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach in a statement.  Salisbury would maintain current operations  for three years,  but would require that WSCL and WSDL hew even closer to the school’s agenda. At the end of three years, the university would reassess the situation.

Wendy Levy, the director of arts consultancy group New Arts AXIS, called for documentary filmmakers to embrace big data tools as a permanent part of their storytelling process during the keynote address at the Media That Matters Conference, held Feb. 15 in Washington, D.C.

PBS’s pending decision on whether to air the next season of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece in the fall — when it runs in Great Britain — or keep it at its usual January premiere date continues to generate chatter among media analysts. Last month, PBS President Paula Kerger told members of the press at the TCA Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.,  that the network is indeed considering a fall launch. “We’re going to end up making the decision based on what we think will be best for the viewers and what will serve them well,” Kerger said. But if PBS did premiere Downton in the fall, it could be lost among all the other network shows, notes SNL Kagan, a news site that covers media/communications and other sectors.