Media & Policy Center: About Us
The Media & Policy Center (www.mediapolicycenter.org) is a multiple award-winning media foundation specializing in the production of socially relevant projects in an entertaining and enlightening context. The Center was founded by Harry Wiland and Dale Bell, whose individual productions have won one Academy Award, five Emmys, one Peabody, two Christophers, two Cine Golden Eagles, and numerous other awards and nominations. Our collective films for PBS, networks, cable, and cinema represent an array of styles including journalism, documentary, dramatic feature film, performance, and industrial.
We formed the Center to apply our talents and experience to issues of social welfare, public policy, education, the environment, and health care. In doing so, we sought to address a glaring disconnect between citizens and public institutions, including national, state, and local governments. While these institutions are meant to provide leadership in establishing our national priorities, this process can only succeed if citizens have access to the information necessary to make well-reasoned and timely judgments about the issues facing them. Thus, the Media & Policy Center's primary goal is to inform, challenge, and ultimately engage a responsive citizenry and to encourage full and meaningful debate and participation across the political, social, and economic spectrum. We are working towards this end by using our media talents to create televised and coordinated multi-media projects that enlighten, educate and empower those members of our society who seek to change their lives and their communities.
Social marketing through media requires a vision. It cannot rely simply on the production of a single television program, or a series, or the publication of a well-researched book. Thus, we have extended our projects to include community-based outreach, educational elements, and project web sites, all supported by and ongoing national publicity and promotion campaigns. These additional efforts transform our programs into initiatives, and extend the scope of the projects across socio-economic lines, across geo-political borders, and across time.
Our first application of this new media model was And Thou Shalt Honor, a PBS broadcast on caregiving and the eldercare crisis. And Thou Shalt Honor was honored as a special "PBS Program of Note" in October 2002. It had an audience of 16 million viewers, garnered over 110 million media impressions, and spawned 9 regionally broadcast town hall meetings with several new town hall broadcasts coming in 2007. Its companion book was published by Rodale Press and has sold over 25,000 copies. It was followed in 2006 by Edens Lost & Found, a four-episode PBS series that examined four American cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle – and their inspirational residents as they confront the challenges of urban restoration through the creation of sustainable urban ecosystems. We are planning second seasons of both And Thou Shalt Honor and Edens Lost & Found, exploring those topics in greater detail and at more global levels. We are also developing new projects that, like those before them, seek to inform and stimulate thought, conversation, and public action on critical issues in health care, the environment, education, and public affairs.
We welcome further inquiries about the Center and our projects, and, as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we are actively seeking sponsorship of the Center's work. For more information, please contact Harry Wiland or Dale Bell via email, or call us at 310-828-2966.