Anchors Away: On the Road With TV Newsmen : Television: In covering the news, Brokaw, Rather and Jennings hope to sell themselves as well as their newscasts.

They’re getting to be America’s most frequent flyers.

Dan Rather jetted to the Soviet Union Jan. 31. Peter Jennings arrived Sunday. Tom Brokaw, after returning from Colombia on Sunday, remained in New York, but was tentatively scheduled to fly later this week to South Africa, where Ted Koppel has been since Saturday.

Walter Lippmann’s definition of the press in 1922--as “the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode then another out of darkness into vision”--also applies to today’s network anchors.

More than just journalists, they’re also traveling salesmen, hoping to sell themselves and their newscasts at the same time they cover the news. Pictures of historical landmarks don’t hurt the sales package.

With famous Red Square as a dramatic backdrop, Rather of CBS and Jennings of ABC were in politically tumultuous Moscow to interpret this week’s meeting of the Communist Party’s central committee--which was closed to the media--and assess the status of embattled Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev at close range. After at least temporarily changing his plans to go immediately to South Africa, Jennings was expected to anchor in Moscow through today. CBS said Tuesday that Rather’s plans were “day to day.”

Television tends to present news as a succession of melodramas, the usual scenario being for Brokaw, Jennings and Rather to show up simultaneously for such epics as the symbolic crumbling of the Berlin Wall--rather like Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short in “Three Amigos.”

Did the absence of one amigo reflect disinterest in the Soviet story on the part of Brokaw? “Not at all,” said an NBC News spokeswoman. Two factors dictated Brokaw’s decision to stay home, she said, the first being his recent return from Colombia, where he did some interviews for “Nightly News,” the second being that “his wife and family are giving Tom a 50th birthday party tonight (Monday), and friends from all over the country are coming in.”

Still, Brokaw may get to South Africa, where black nationalist icon Nelson R. Mandela’s long-awaited release from prison was still in limbo Tuesday amid continued reverberations from President Frederik W. de Klerk’s historic announcement of broad reforms.

This electrified atmosphere is what brought ABC’s Koppel to South Africa, where, starting tonight (at 11:30 on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) he was scheduled to originate a week’s worth of “Nightline” segments, hoping to echo the program’s memorable telecasts from South Africa five years ago.

On “Nightline,” despite Koppel’s predominance, the message is the interview. In going to South Africa, “Nightline” is essentially hoping to energize its interviews by journeying to the heart of a significant breaking story and making comparisons with the South Africa it found five years ago.

On nightly newscasts, however, the anchors themselves become the message. And their presence on a story dramatically shapes how that story is covered.

Take Moscow, for example, where Gorbachev’s proposed de-emphasis of the Communist Party has indeed been profound and cataclysmic.

--With Rather anchoring “The CBS Evening News” from the edge of Red Square Monday (and Bob Schieffer mopping up in New York), Soviet news consumed nearly 70% of the 22-minute news hole.

--With Jennings anchoring “World News Tonight” from the edge of Red Square (and Diane Sawyer doing secondary anchoring from New York), Soviet news got about half of the news hole.

--With Brokaw anchoring “Nightly News” from New York (and Garrick Utley assigned Red Square duty in Moscow), more than two-thirds of the news hole went to news other than the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet story led the newscast, Brokaw’s interview and profile of an anti-drug crusading Columbian police official (which included ample shots of Brokaw walking with him) were allotted half the time given Soviet coverage.

It’s just speculation, of course, but the Soviet Union probably would have received more coverage on NBC had Brokaw been there, and less on CBS and ABC had not Rather and Jennings been there.

Here are some other comparisons on South Africa:

--Generally judged to be at least the second-biggest foreign story of the week, it got only about 30 seconds on the Soviet-laden CBS newscast.

--On ABC, with Koppel reporting from the scene, South Africa was allotted four minutes, a hefty package by network standards.

--NBC gave South Africa two minutes, about splitting the difference between CBS and ABC.

It’s hard to fault the CBS Soviet coverage in principle. After all, covering just one or two significant stories, such as the sweeping Gorbachev reforms, and leaving the rest for other media is probably the best use of time-starved, surface-skimming network newscasts. If it’s true that news is the first draft of history, as someone once said, then network newscasts in their present form are rarely more than the index.

There are exceptions--those great spectacles, for example, marking the revolutionary reforms in East Europe and also the turbulence of Mainland China’s Tian An Men Square, when CNN and CBS so dramatically captured government attempts to censor their transmissions.

Yet even when networks attempt to do a more thorough job, anchors and the image-driven need to present them in dramatic settings frequently get in the way, with the spectacle becoming a sort of movie, with them as star. “The Gorbachev Gamble”--the title of a Monday-night minispecial anchored by Rather--sounded like some sort of spy thriller.

Rather, whose program continues to trail the front-running Jennings newscast and the Brokaw newscast in the ratings, absolutely dominated the Soviet coverage on his Monday newscast. This was Godzilla grinding Moscow under his feet. If Rather wasn’t narrating stories, he was introducing them, and there he was in some great hall, debriefing correspondents Tom Fenton and Barry Peterson: “Barry, tell me about Lithuania.” Us, too, Barry.

There on ABC was Jennings, too, narrating stories, out on the street interviewing Soviets (“Do you think things are better now than they were six years ago?”) and interviewing foreign ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov in the cold night (Gerasimov wore a fur hat) in front of Red Square. Very dramatic.

Finally, there was Rather at a similar spot Tuesday morning, his breath visible in the chilly morning air, being interviewed about the Soviet Union on “CBS This Morning” by co-host Kathleen Sullivan.

These traveling anchors are experienced reporters and bright fellows. The implication from all of this, however, is that they are also reporters for all seasons and topics, that heading a nighly newscast somehow imbues one with profound knowledge and understanding of global issues, that the presence of these news wizards on a story somehow provides a depth and breadth to a story that otherwise would be impossible. It’s a carefully cultivated image, but a misleading one.

What anchors know a lot about is flying.