What Thank You for Smoking Taught Me About Ethics

    The first time I watched Thank You for Smoking, I didn't quite enjoy it. Although it’s not the kind of film I would typically choose for myself, the humor and dialogue really kept my attention. While it aims for humor, the film surprisingly delves into significant issues surrounding ethics, marketing, and the essence of responsibility. What resonated with me the most was the contemplation of the distinction between legality and morality.

    The moment that stands out to me the most is the conclusion, when Nick Naylor decides to reject the job offer. Throughout the film, he dedicates himself to justifying an industry widely recognized as harmful to people. However, when he looks at his son, he ultimately chooses a different path. To me, that's theessence of what the film truly conveys. Behind the humor and witty debates, there's a deeper message: money isn't always the top priority. Sometimes your values and how your family sees you matter more.

I really don’t think I could handle Nick Naylor’s job. I couldn't see myself working in marketing for cigarettes, and I definitely wouldn't want to promote vaping products either. No amount of money could change my decision. If I don't truly believe in what I'm selling, there's no chance I'd be good at convincing anyone else. Marketing relies heavily on confidence, and I find it challenging to promote or advertise something that I believe is harmful.

Additionally, I believe that businesses ought to have the freedom to promote legal products. Not everyone agrees, but my logic is pretty simple. If the government says you can sell something, then you should be able to advertise it (as long as there are reasonable rules). Otherwise, what’s the purpose of legalizing it? For me, the more pressing question isn’t about advertisements; it’s about the underlying reasons for the existence of these industries in the first place. Substances such as cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, and
marijuana generate significant tax revenue, complicating the dynamic between public health and government interests. The CDC reports that cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the US, accounting for more than 480,000 fatalities annually. Despite the statistics, governments continue to regulate and tax tobacco rather than place a ban on it.

I believe Heather Holloway was right to reveal the practices of the tobacco industry. It’s crucial for journalists to take on the responsibility of keeping the public informed, especially when companies choose to conceal information that impacts our health. Maybe she overstepped some personal boundaries, but ultimately, it's up to the audience to make that judgment. I believe that revealing the industry's tactics was a justified action, and she was completely entitled to take that step.

Personally, I didn’t have family members who smoked while growing up, so it never seemed like a normal thing to me. I understand that everyone has unique experiences, and those experiences shape their perspectives on substances like tobacco and alcohol. Although films may romanticize smoking and drinking, I believe it poses a greater risk to allow governments or corporations to dictate the media we can access. It's important to recognize the distinction between alerting individuals to potential dangers and restricting historical narratives or curtailing free expression.

Ultimately, Thank You for Smoking made me reflect more on ethical considerations than on the topic of tobacco itself. Just because something is permitted doesn't imply that it is morally acceptable. However, attempting to control speech or media can lead to its own set of issues. I believe it's important for companies to be held accountable when they are dishonest, and individuals should have the freedom to make their own decisions.

The Price of AI

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was talking about the Great Depression. I couldn’t help but think about that quote while I was watching In the Age of AI. AI is moving so fast right now that it’s hard not to feel either excited or intimidated by it. Watching the documentary made me realize that the answer is not to fear AI itself, but to be aware of how it is being developed and used. AI is everywhere now, and honestly, it’s jarring how much it’s slipped into daily life. ChatGPT helps with homework, and Netflix knows exactly what I want to binge next.

The Age of AI opened my eyes to a side of the technology that worries me. One thing that really stuck with me was how much AI is shaking up the job market. AI could replace office work and factory jobs. What are people supposed to do when people lose their jobs and haven't developed the skills to adjust to the job market. Sure, AI can make companies run smoother, but that means fewer people actually have jobs. The part about smart devices like Alexa and Google Home honestly freaked me out.

I never thought about how these devices could detect changes in someone’s voice or even health conditions. While that technology could help people identify illnesses earlier, it’s also a major privacy concern. Technology could know so much about me just from the way I speak. Even with all this stuff to worry about, I don’t think we should be totally scared of AI. It could change healthcare, education, and transportation. The problem is ensuring it is developed without violating our privacy or rights.

Every Citizen Has a Story

Federal investigators detained Don Lemon on Jan. 29, 2026, while reporting on a demonstration outside a church in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Lemon states that he was only reporting what was happening, but prosecutors say he was breaking the law by protesting. Lemon was on camera stating at the time that he was not there as a protestor but as a journalist. But that didn’t matter.  Federal investigators arrested him, charged him, and publicly humiliated him for “doing his job.” 

Don Lemon was a journalist for CNN for over a decade. He even had his own nightly news show. With the change in presidential administrations, a change in journalist positions at major newsrooms occurred, including the firing of Don Lemon. No longer an employee of CNN, Lemon is now an independent journalist, or citizen journalist, with thousands of followers and subscribers to his Youtube channel. 

Breaking news isn’t something you read about on TV or see in the newspaper these days. Smartphones, livestreams, and social media mean ordinary people are often the first to witness protests, disasters, crimes, and even major historical moments. This is known as citizen journalism. It is when the unemployed, or independent,  reporters break the news to the world. Almost everyone has a phone these days, so anyone can be a witness, a storyteller or the first to let the world know what’s happening. One of the benefits of citizen journalism is the news these citizens record or report isn’t censured by executives in mega corporations. In a sense, the public is more apt to get “real news” instead of “fake news.” 

But the term citizen journalism means something larger to me than just reporting. "What does it mean to be a citizen, really? If the word citizen is as important as journalism, who gets to tell America’s stories? Who is invited to the conversation? These questions seem even more important today, as people are still arguing over immigration and who should be granted birthright citizenship. The recent Supreme Court ruling on citizenship at birth has revived discussions about who is a citizen and what citizenship really means.

The First Amendment, in fact, protects a lot of speech and press rights for everyone, not just citizens. But that’s not how it always sounds when people talk about these issues. Whether it's immigrants, people without documents, or independent journalists, there is the idea that some people shouldn't be allowed to record what's happening, share information, or have a voice in what the country discusses, just because they're seen as outsiders. So the discussion about Don Lemon’s arrest is really more than just about journalism. It forces us to ask: who gets to document history, who gets to tell it, whose voice actually matters? As citizen journalism continues to change the way we get our news, perhaps the real question is not just who is a journalist, but who we think deserves to be heard.

Why Do We Only Hear Some Voices?

The first time I heard about the couple that climbed the Empire State Building to protest climate change, I thought they were crazy. Climbing one of the tallest buildings in the world is a pretty extreme way to get people’s attention. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a sign that the old ways of protesting just weren’t getting through.

The biggest thing I took away from this week’s lectures is that the First Amendment protects dissent. A government action to prevent publication prior to publication is called a prior restraint, and prior restraints are generally not allowed. Later, in the Pentagon Papers case, the Court strengthened those protections by requiring the government to show direct, immediate, and irreparable harm before it could block publication.

These cases are examples of the law’s strong protection of government criticism, because democracy requires the people to criticize their leaders. I spent some time surfing Antiwar.com and The American Conservative, and I found that both sites frequently publish articles critical of U.S. military activity around the globe. They might not come from the same political backgrounds as many of the major news organizations, but all of them believe that military intervention creates more problems than it solves.

It made me wonder why anti-war sentiments are so rare in mainstream news. I don’t believe that there is suppression of antiwar views due to government censorship or illegality, because under the First Amendment, such views are as protected as pro-war views. Instead, mainstream media outlets use editorial discretion to decide which issues and viewpoints to highlight.

Mainstream media is about breaking news, government pronouncements, and military developments because they appeal to large audiences. Smaller publications that regularly challenge military intervention simply do not get the same exposure.

Justice Holmes wrote that society benefits from competing viewpoints because they help people assess which ideas are strongest. If that principle matters, then it matters to listen to antiwar voices, even if we do not end up agreeing with them. A marketplace only functions when people know there are different views. I do not think everybody has to agree with the writers at Antiwar.com or The American Conservative. But it is valuable that those perspectives exist and are protected.

The First Amendment is not only about protecting opinions with which we already agree, but also about protecting unpopular opinions. If we hear only one side of a case as serious as war, we are not really engaged in the open debate the First Amendment was meant to foster.

The Illusion of Privacy

Sometimes it seems like we are never really alone, even when we are just sitting in our room. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve told a friend about something unusual, like a new pair of shoes or a weird snack, and then I open up Instagram or Google, and there’s advertising for just that. It's a little spooky. Is privacy even a thing anymore? It makes me think whether it's because of monitoring, search history, or just apps listening in.

We are never by ourselves.

Surveillance is no longer the stuff of sci-fi movies. I watched a TED Talk by Catherine Crump, who discusses how technology intended for national security is now being used by local police across the country. She talks about Automatic License Plate Readers that follow your car even if you haven’t done anything illegal. 

There are stingray devices and mobile tower dumps that can also pull information from your phone. Essentially, the government can discover where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing each day. Sure, this stuff can help arrest criminals, but it also makes me worried about what this means for our privacy.

Watching that TED talk really frightened me a bit. I never really thought about how much information might be collected about me without my knowing. It reminds me of family and friends and how strange it is that our location and personal info can be stored elsewhere, even if we’ve done nothing wrong. I believe everyone has the right to some privacy, and it is wrong for ordinary people to feel as if they are being watched all the time.

I think the government needs to do more to tighten the laws on how long a company may have surveillance data and also make sure the police destroy information about innocent people. We should also know what data is being collected and why. We can protect ourselves by checking our privacy settings and not sharing too much online. There has to be a way to keep people safe without everyone being watched all the time.

From Switchboards to FaceTime: How Video Calling Has Evolved

My mom made me watch Little House on the Prairie for what felt like forever. For two years in a row, I watched episode after episode of the Ingalls family living in Walnut Grove, Minn. One episode in particular stayed with me because it showed the town getting its first telephone. No number keys, no rotary dial. The wooden box had an earpiece
and a separate microphone, wired together. A telephone operator in a central office made the connection between homes miles apart. 

Even worse was Mrs. Oleson, the town’s richest woman and the town’s biggest gossip, who was the operator and could listen in on every conversation.

I thought the episode was funny then. It’s amazing to look back at it now and see how far communication technology has come. What once required a switchboard operator can now be done instantly on a device that fits in my pocket. We have gone from waiting for a phone call to be connected with someone to making high-definition video calls with people on the other side of the world. That evolution ultimately led to one technology that many of us use every day without a second thought: FaceTime.

In Little House on the Prairie, the telephone was the start of a communications revolution. With advances in technology, telephones became more common in everyday households. Rotary phones were commonly found in American homes in the mid-1900s. Instead of an operator, a user could dial numbers himself on a circular dial. It also provided privacy and made communication easier and faster.

The next big step came in 1973 when Martin Cooper made the first cellular phone call. Now people could talk to each other while they were on the go, at work, or just away from home. The first cell phones were big and expensive, but they introduced a revolutionary idea: the ability to communicate from virtually anywhere.

Then 2007 came along, and Apple changed the game with the iPhone. The iPhone was so much more than just a phone. It combined communication, internet access, photography, entertainment, and more into a single unit. Texting, social media, and mobile internet were all important, but one feature stands out to me above all: FaceTime.

Apple introduced FaceTime in 2010 with the iPhone 4. It was designed to be easy for the average user to do video calls. Before FaceTime, video calls often meant downloading software, creating accounts, and sitting at a computer. There were programs like Skype, but they were often cumbersome and inconvenient. Apple wanted to make it as easy to do a video call as it is to do a phone call.

What I find most interesting about FaceTime is how it made something that seemed futuristic so simple. Rather than entering usernames or fiddling with complicated settings, a user can simply tap a contact to start a video call. FaceTime was built into Apple devices, so it seemed like a natural and easy process. People could suddenly not only hear each other’s voices, but they could also see each other’s faces, from almost anywhere with an Internet connection.

I think that’s where FaceTime has the biggest impact on college students. When I went to college, I learned just how much I relied on FaceTime to stay in touch with family and friends back home. TEXT messages are great, but nothing beats the look on a person’s face or their laugh when you see them live. FaceTime makes long-distance communication so much more personal.

The COVID-19 pandemic made FaceTime even more crucial. It went from being a nice feature to being an essential way to communicate.

But FaceTime isn’t without its downsides. Apple protects users with end-to-end encryption, but privacy concerns persist. FaceTime itself is also pretty much confined to Apple’s ecosystem, so not everyone has access. Constant video communication can also lead to “video-call fatigue” and the pressure to be available at all times.

I think FaceTime has been overwhelmingly positive for communication, despite the challenges. It solved a big problem by making video calling easy, accessible, and reliable . It took a video conversation from being something very technical and complicated to just completely normal.

It’s amazing to go back and watch that episode of Little House on the Prairie and see how far communication technology has come. What began as a wooden box connected to a switchboard has grown to instant face-to-face conversations that can take place anywhere in the world. FaceTime is humanity’s never-ending quest for connection, no matter the distance, and it has completely changed the way we communicate.

Dissent, Dialogue, and Democracy

Out of the Eight Values of Free Expression, the value that connects most with me is Protect Dissent. Protect Dissent says that people have the right to disagree with the government or the majority without fear of punishment. Even if an opinion is unpopular, it deserves protection because freedom of expression is one of democracy's foundations.

This value feels important to me because the founding of the United States was rooted in dissent. Many colonists disagreed with the policies and authority of the British government. They challenged the king's rule and spoke out against what they believed were unfair laws. The creation of the United States began with people expressing unpopular views with those in power. If those voices had been silenced, this nation might never have existed.

Because of this history, I think protecting dissent is one of the most important values of free expression. It reminds us that change and progress begin when people are willing to question authority. Throughout American history, movements for civil rights and other social changes have relied on people speaking out against the majority opinion. Protecting dissent guarantees that new ideas can be heard and debated rather than suppressed.

Another value that is important to me is Stable Change, also known as the Safety Valve Theory. This theory says that society is more stable when people can openly express their frustrations and concerns.
When people can protest, engage in public debate, and speak their minds, they are less likely to resort to violence because they have peaceful ways to express their thoughts.

I think this theory is relevant today because social media gives people the opportunity to voice their opinions on everything from politics to social issues. Sites such as Instagram, TikTok, and X allow people to convey their thoughts and support change. Although these conversations can become heated, they still provide an important space for people to be heard.

When people can express their concerns openly, they are more likely to fight for change by working within the system instead of acting against it in destructive ways. They can vote, organize peaceful protests, work with local government, and raise awareness about issues they care about. In this way, freedom of expression reduces conflict and encourages positive social change.

I think these two values are closely connected. Protect Dissent explains why people should have the right to challenge the government, whereas Stable Change explains why allowing that criticism benefits society. When people feel as if their voices matter, they tend to participate in democracy rather than withdraw from it.

As a 20-year-old, I see these values in action every day. Social media has made it easier for people to participate in online discourse. It gives people a platform that previous generations never had. The ability to speak freely, even when others disagree, is one of the things that makes our society work.

Overall, Protect Dissent and Stable Change are the values of free expression that connect with me the most. They make me remember that free speech is not only about protecting popular opinions; it is also about protecting unpopular opinions and creating opportunities for peaceful change. The history of the United States shows the importance of dissent, and modern technology continues to demonstrate why allowing people to express themselves openly is still essential today.