Brokaw, Koppel Will Report From Beijing

NBC News, which on Monday said Garrick Utley was going to Beijing, then changed its mind Tuesday even as he was en route to the airport, said Thursday that anchorman Tom Brokaw is going there now.

Brokaw is expected to start reporting from Beijing today, perhaps as early as this morning’s “Today” show.

Meanwhile, ABC said “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel also is flying to Beijing “sometime this weekend” to work on a “Koppel Report” special--no air date has been set--examining the crisis in China and how it developed.

While there, an ABC spokeswoman said, Koppel also will file reports for “World News Tonight,” “World News This Morning” and probably “Nightline.” He may start filing reports as early as Monday, depending on when he arrives in Beijing, the spokeswoman said.

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Brokaw has been to China six times, the last time in 1987, was to arrive in Beijing late Thursday to join NBC’s staff there in reporting the fast-changing developments.

He is the first network anchor to make the trip since last month, when CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN anchor Bernard Shaw were in Beijing and helped cover the massive student demonstrations that were bloodily crushed by Chinese army troops last weekend.

Like all other correspondents in Beijing, Brokaw will be able to file his live reports by telephone only. All live and taped video transmissions from Beijing have been banned since May 22.

Plans to send Brokaw had been kept secret, spokeswoman Peggy Hubble said, because NBC didn’t want to draw attention to the anchorman--and possibly jeopardize his trip--until he arrived in Beijing.

She said Utley hadn’t been able to get a visa from the Chinese consulate here, so NBC News president Michael Gartner and executive news director Donald Browne decided to send Brokaw, who had a still-current entry visa.

He had gotten the visa last month, she said, when NBC was thinking of sending him to cover Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s China visit last month.

In a brief interview Wednesday, Utley said that before NBC recalled him while he was en route to Kennedy Airport, he had anticipated no problem in getting a visa to China once he arrived in Hong Kong, where other China-bound correspondents have been able to get the document despite the uncertainty of the situation in Beijing.

Utley now will be anchoring the “NBC Nightly News” while Brokaw is in Beijing, Hubble said. Utley also anchors “Sunday Today” and “Meet the Press.”