Toughest Job for Panel Members Is Getting Entire Message Across : Follow-up: Chairman is dismayed that many are commenting on document without digesting it as a whole.

It should come as no surprise that so far one the toughest parts of selling the 228-page Christopher Commission Report is persuading people to read it.

“You think there is some way that you could get the rest of the public, or maybe even the City Council, to read the report . . . ?” Warren Christopher asked Times editors and reporters at a luncheon on Wednesday.

Beginning with his early morning meeting with Mayor Tom Bradley on Tuesday and extending through a series of media interviews Wednesday, Christopher has been painstakingly selling his report as a thoughtful, scholarly document that must be digested in its entirety--not a flash-in-the-pan assault on Chief Daryl F. Gates and the Police Department.

“The Commission unanimously concluded that recommendations on these transitional issues were an important part of our task,” Christopher said in releasing the report, “However, we hope they will not blind you to the more enduring recommendations that are central to our report.”

It has not been an easy sell. Just 20 minutes after the report was released to reporters on the condition that it not be made public for two hours, a reporter for KABC television went on the air with a live report announcing that it called for Gates’ ouster. The press embargo broken, other stations followed with similar broadcasts--none based on a thorough reading of the carefully crafted document.

Restless journalists were not alone. Community leaders, City Council members--even Gates himself--made public pronouncements about the report and its recommendations without having sifted through all of its pages.

“I was disappointed that it came so fast,” Christopher said of Gates’ reaction. “I had hoped he would be more deliberate about it, that he would study the report, rather than reacting in the same news cycle.”

As a matter of protocol and courtesy, Christopher and Vice Chairman John A. Arguelles had arranged to deliver copies of the report to the City Council an hour before its public release. But when they arrived at City Hall, they were greeted by council members who already knew about the report’s most sensational recommendation.

Christopher and other members of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department spent much of the past two days explaining the report to reporters. In addition to “Nightline,” Christopher appeared on PBS’s “MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” “The CBS Evening News” and CNN. John Spiegel, general counsel to the commission, appeared on NBC’s “Today” show and other members of the commission were interviewed by local television and radio stations.

The commission, however, was not alone in putting its spin on the story. Bradley was in his City Hall office by 4 a.m. Wednesday to conduct interviews with all three network morning news shows, and Gates was telling his story to Michael Jackson on KABC radio. Various City Council members called press conferences, as did several community groups, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Urban League and the American Jewish Congress.

Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said the mayor hoped to take advantage of media attention on Los Angeles to help repair the city’s image, which has suffered since the March police beating of Rodney G. King. On “Good Morning America,” Bradley said that “every city in the nation” has experienced some of the same problems identified by the Christopher Commission.

“The mayor was the first to admit in March that the city’s image had been severely tarnished by the beating of Rodney King,” Chandler said. “The commission report offers the city an opportunity to repair much of the damage that occurred.”

Meanwhile, Gates was engaged in his own effort at damage control.

“There was nothing in there that was new or startling to us,” he told radio host Michael Jackson early Wednesday.