American TV, Soviet Leaders Form Bond : Media: The networks have had unprecedented access. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin have used them to plead their cases at home and abroad.

A curious feature of the upheaval in the Soviet Union is the extraordinary access that the political leadership there has granted to American television.

CBS and CNN cameras have prowled the halls of the KGB’s once-secret headquarters, the notorious Lubyanka Prison. ABC has conducted interviews with Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin as he defied last month’s attempted coup and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev shortly thereafter. And in the last three days, CNN has conducted lengthy live interviews with both leaders that produced front-page headlines for newspapers worldwide.

The television networks, in turn, have engaged in a dogged race to exploit the Soviet crisis to their competitive advantage.

The presidents of both ABC and CNN are now in Moscow personally helping to line up interviews. ABC, for example, hopes to resurrect tonight a televised town meeting, originally scheduled for Monday night, featuring Gorbachev and Yeltsin together answering questions from Americans around the United States.

U.S. television executives say that Soviet leaders apparently feel that appearing on American broadcasts, many of which are rebroadcast in the Soviet Union, gives them a credibility that they would not have on their domestic television alone.

Such tactics do “add to the weight” of the message, said NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, “because (the Soviet people) remain suspicious of anything that comes from their own megaphone.”

ABC found the Soviets eager to use the American media. The network’s news division had been pressing Gorbachev for an interview since the coup two weeks ago, just as other news organizations were doing. But then last week, officials of the Russian broadcasting agency Gosteleradio approached ABC officials, suggesting that Gorbachev appear in the town meeting format, in which he would appear in front of a live audience in one city, while ABC anchor Peter Jennings would have another audience in a second city.

Such a program, similar to a frequent ABC feature called “Capitol to Capitol,” would be a joint effort of ABC and Gosteleradio, they suggested.

Initially, ABC was not entirely enthusiastic. The network indicated that it would prefer to wait until later in September when Americans are back from vacation and viewers could have been more numerous. But the leaders of Gosteleradio countered that they could make Yeltsin available for the program as well.

ABC agreed. The broadcast was postponed until the current Congress of People’s Deputies finishes its emergency session, probably today. But “the fact these two (will be) together and taking questions and also doing it with an international forum and an international news organization, the import of that domestically (in the Soviet Union) cannot be underestimated,” said Robert Murphy, vice president of news coverage for ABC.

“There has to be some other reason (for them) to do it than just making a point to the American people and the American government.”

Officials at CNN, meanwhile, believed that they had been promised interviews with both Yeltsin and Gorbachev. CNN President Tom Johnson flew to Moscow to lobby personally for the interviews.

When Johnson and his foreign editor, Eason Jordan, arrived at the offices of Gosteleradio, Johnson recounted in a telephone interview from Moscow, he happened upon Yeltsin’s aide, Mikhail N. Poltoranin, who serves as the Russian Federation’s information minister.

Johnson and his aides quickly spread out a map on the trunk of a car, pointing out the 123 countries in which the network’s broadcast is carried. Poltoranin indicated that he was enthusiastic about Yeltsin appearing.

After more whirlwind meetings, CNN got both interviews, Gorbachev’s on Sunday and Yeltsin’s on Tuesday.

In Gorbachev’s case, CNN Executive Vice President Ed Turner said, the Soviet president apparently wanted to make an appeal that would be seen on Soviet television Sunday.

“I think the speed with which we could get it on the air and have it rebroadcast prior to the Congress of People’s Deputies meeting had something to do with it,” Turner said.

And now as the Congress meets in Moscow, journalists are finding the delegates inside suddenly more sophisticated about the media than they were even a few months ago.

Can democracy be forged under the heat of klieg lights and media attention?

“You think of the Founding Fathers locking themselves in a room and hammering out the Constitution in private,” said NBC’s Brokaw. “I wonder if they would have been as enthusiastic about the First Amendment if every time there was a break there had been (ABC’s) Sam Donaldson and (UPI’s) Helen Thomas saying, ‘What’s going on in there?’ ”