Whitley eventually gets up her nerve to ask Daad about Salman Rushdie: "I would like you to explain how that death sentence was given to him."

"We don't allow some person pretending to be creative to insult and make fun of our principles." says Daad. "He has to be punished because of the insult."

Whitley grimaces. "I don't understand how I can have a really horrible, terrible idea that I've expressed and I must be killed for it."

"How does your country behave against a person who does a crime?" asks Daad. "For example, one person has killed another person. They send him to the electric chair; they take the life from him. This is only a physical crime, whereas people like Salman Rushdie do intellectual crimes, which are much, much more profound and much deeper than physical death and physical destruction. Don't you believe so?"

"It frightens me," Whitley answers, "because if this person's free speech is interpreted as an insult, then everybody will be less confident to speak out for fear that their criticism will be interpreted as an insult. What's the effect of that death sentence on free speech?"

"You needn't worry about such things," Daad responds. "Everyone with a little knowledge can understand the difference between criticism and insult."

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"I think I believe too much in the divinity of the individual," Whitley says, "to understand how a person's life can be taken for an idea even if I hate the idea."

"This is the principle of my religion," Daad replies.

Letting us in on this kind of cross-cultural tête-à-tête, focusing our eyes on people and places that are generally overlooked or dehumanized by politicians and the media, is a driving force behind the pioneering work of Spencer, 53, and Evelyn Messinger, 50. Husband and wife, the two independent television producers have spent decades grappling with rudimentary satellite technology and the bureaucratic rigmarole in foreign countries to, as Spencer puts it, "deliver on the promise of the picture phone."

Two decades ago, when it took 2-ton satellites, big trucks and hundreds of thousands of dollars to let people converse via live TV, they managed to produce unimaginable conversations -- like a 1983 link that allowed Soviet and American scientists to discuss the effects of a nuclear winter. The conversation resulted in unprecedented agreement; both sides admitted that a nuclear attack would have a devastating impact. "All of a sudden we realized we were not just making TV, we were shaping the relationships between these two countries," Spencer says.

In 1988, with a bleak Cold War mentality dominating the Reagan administration and much of the United States, Spencer helped cajole members of the U.S. Congress and deputies of the Supreme Soviet to talk via satellite TV. The "Capital to Capital" series, co-produced with ABC News and Gosteleradio (the Soviet radio and TV committee), picked up two Emmy Awards and a Christopher Award.

As he continued arranging unlikely global conversations, Spencer's documentaries continued collecting awards. The International Teleconferencing Association award went to "Vis à Vis: Cease Fire." The show, conceived by Spencer, Messinger and their longtime partner, French TV producer Patrice Barrat, features a conversation between two teenage girls who grew up during war -- one in Bosnia, the other in Ireland. Meanwhile, his work on "Vis à Vis: Beyond the Veil," the Whitley-Daad conversation, made Spencer the first American TV producer to work independently in Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"I was doing interactive TV before they'd invented it," says Spencer, a former "PrimeTime Live" producer who has directed or produced more than 50 hours of independent television programming. "Now the technologies are there to make it happen."

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