Gordon Manning, 89; TV Executive Arranged Brokaw Interview With Gorbachev

Gordon Manning, 89, a TV news executive who helped guide coverage of some of the 20th century’s most significant events and arranged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s first interview on U.S. television, has died.

Manning suffered heart failure at his home in Westport, Conn., and was taken to Norwalk Hospital, where he died Wednesday, his son, Doug Manning, said.

Manning started his journalism career in Boston as a reporter for United Press. He later went on to jobs as managing editor of Collier’s magazine, executive editor of Newsweek and vice president of both CBS News and NBC News.

Gorbachev’s one-hour exchange with NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw aired in November 1987, shortly before his summit meeting with President Reagan. Manning had visited Moscow regularly for two years, cultivating contacts in the Kremlin in an effort to land the interview.

The interview and another major NBC project from 1987, “Changing China,” won Manning a George Polk Award in Journalism in 1988.

Earlier, as an executive at CBS, Manning led the news team that covered President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972.

That year, Manning was a key backer of the decision to run a detailed report on Watergate on the “CBS Evening News,” according to the book “The Powers That Be” by David Halberstam.

The unprecedented length -- 14 minutes -- of the first segment of Walter Cronkite’s report in the fall of 1972 helped ensure national attention to the then-emerging scandal.