Excerpt: On the Road and On Camera With Tom Friedman By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 17, 2003; Page C01
Traveling with a camera crew, Thomas Friedman says, is harder than it looks.
From Qatar to Indonesia to Bahrain, the New York Times columnist spentmonths interviewing Muslims for a cable documentary called "Searching for the Roots of 9/11." And he learned something about the limitations of television.
"One thing about being a columnist is you get to talk to a lot of people off the record because you don't really need any quotes," he says. "That means a higher percentage of the time, people will tell you the truth. The thing that was so hard in doing this is getting people to tell you the truth on camera -- about an incredibly sensitive subject."
Friedman's venture into filmmaking stems from a partnership between the Discovery Channel and the Times's new television unit, which are also launching the digital-only Discovery Times Channel. His program is part of a monthly "Spotlight" series that includes NBC as a partner and debuted last month with a Tom Brokaw special on bioterrorism. "This is something that almost no one else does in television," says Discovery Communications executive Don Baer.
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