I’m beginning to think those mobile-phone studies on memory loss are for real. How else to explain the superb op-ed penned by Ron Nessen in the Nov. 19 Washington Post?
The piece, “Remember the President Who Helped Us Rise Above Rancor,” blended nostalgia and realism in looking back at President Ford’s healing leadership following the 1974 Nixon resignation and in looking ahead to a similar political challenge facing the next president of the United States.
It’s a fine piece of writing, and if you didn’t know any better you might think Nessen, press secretary to Ford and currently vice president for communications at the Brookings Institution, embraces the above-the-fray, consensus-driven approach of his former boss.
What happened in between Nessen’s stints at the White House and Brookings Institution suggests otherwise.
Nessen was the communications czar at the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association during the early- to mid-1990s, when the No. 1 job of the trade group’s public-relations machine was damage control in the aftermath of a highly publicized mobile phone-cancer lawsuit in Florida. The suit failed, as did several others in subsequent years.
In fact, it seemed for a time the cellular phone industry had dodged the bullet. No more litigation, no more bad publicity. No doubt, CTIA-which manages health issues for wireless carriers and equipment vendors-must have felt confident and emboldened by this apparent PR victory.
To be sure, Nessen was a major architect-if not the mastermind-of the cellular industry’s public-relations campaign to deal with the mobile phone-cancer issue. Have you ever seen the three-inch thick CTIA media spin guide? It’s a gem.
In addressing the combustible cancer issue, Nessen was nothing like the man he so admiringly describes in The Post. Nessen could be rude, abrasive and unhelpful. That’s if he liked you. What’s worse, though, is the lasting damage he’s done to the mobile-phone industry. The poisoned press relations fostered by Nessen, and his boss, CTIA President Thomas Wheeler, has complicated the wireless health issue exponentially.
A new wave of health-related lawsuits has just begun to hit the industry. They’ll be more. And more. And more.
The scorched-earth, shout ’em down PR policy Nessen developed and nurtured will hurt the wireless industry for years to come.
Unlike, the early 1990s, there’s more mobile-phone health research showing DNA breaks, genetic damage, memory impairment and other effects.
Maybe Wheeler will pardon you, Ron.
