Thank You for Smoking (2006) is a comedy based on Christopher Buckley’s novel written in 1994 about a company businessman fighting for protection and the right to smoke in America. Nick Naylor is the Vice President and spokesperson for Big Tobacco, which is Washington D.C. main lobby for the tobacco industries. His job is to go around the country and alter individuals’ opinion on smoking in America. He lives by the phrase, “if it’s your job to be right, then you’re never wrong”(38:40).
Big Tobacco’s company design is unethical. They are a company looking out for their own and not thinking about the individuals being harmed by purchasing their product. When selling this product, it is their ethical responsibility to address the health hazards of smoking but with Big Tobacco’s philosophy being driven by money that does not happen. Big Tobacco finds ways to avoid telling the complete truth. In the first scene of the movie, Nick speaks to the segments of the company that allows for him to keep promoting the toxic product. First, the Big Tobacco Company created a research lab called the Academy of Tobacco Studies. Within the complex, the scientist Erhandt Von Grupten Mundt is tries to find an inconclusive ways of correlating between nicotine and lung cancer. Also within the complex is a team of lawyers who fight individuals who come with evidence of the product being toxic. Their job is to hide the evidence and make the stories go away. Then there is Nick.
Nick Naylor is an exceptionalist with no educational background about cigarettes. If this were to happen in real life, the spokesperson of cigarettes would have to have a background of information about the product and have evidence behind the facts that he or she will be presenting. With that being said though, depending on the situation and the fact that are presented he will make a decision on what to share with the public. He does not look for the greater good of a situation, just for the right decision at that time for himself. Due to Nick being an exceptionalist is the reason he is incomparable at his job as a spokesperson for a toxic company. He knows for a fact that smoking can cause death or disease but still takes in the opinions of other people about the product and speaks to those ideas. When he would express those ideas to the pubic, he would come off as unethical. He was not looking for the greater good and was not presented any of the facts about the company to the public. He was expressing the positive of smoking with no address to the negative.
One other clear ethical issue within the movie was the action of Heather Halloway. Heather Halloway is a relativist. When she published her article in the Washington Post about Nick, she was not think about the other individuals who he spoke about getting hurt in the process. The article she posted was a piece to try to get ahead of the pack as a reporter and did not care who she hurt along the way. Her ultimate happiness was the main goal.
Ashley Howes
Thank You For Smoking [Motion picture]. (2006). USA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Media Ethics in the Morning 