Is ExpoTV's filtering policy ethical?

Updated: If you are reading this in a feed reader, please visit the page to read the response from ExpoTV CEO Daphne Kwon. The response has clarified the concern I raised to my (and I hope everyone's) satisfaction. Thanks Daphne!

Last week I reported on a video reviews site called ExpoTv. During the demo, I asked about their syndication policy regarding positive and negative reviews. Since I was the last question, I don't think they had a chance to full answer, but the gist of their reply was, "We allow the retailers to pick what they show." That just does not sit well with me.

Thi Luu, SVP, Web Operations provided a comment on my original post:

Thanks for feedback on ExpoTV and wanted to address your question about our syndication strategy. We feel that because video is a new medium for most retailers and comparison shopping engines, they haven't yet been able to build into their sites the sorting functionality about the content being positive or negative.

They link to and promote ExpoTV to allow users a more robust experience and to find more video product reviews. Until they build the capability to sort through the videos, having a lot of them without any ability to skim through them is tough on users. So for now, we let them display what they want.

As the retailers build more functionality around videos on their sites, we agree it's a much better user experience (and written reviews have proven it's more effective) to offer all opinions and we will be encouraging them to do so.

That's why we feel strongly about letting people submit positive and negative videos about products on ExpoTV.com and compensate our video creators for both types of videos. Hope this helps to address your question.

Best,
Thi Luu
SVP, Web Operations

Thanks for the reply Thi. What I would like to understand is the ExpoTv policy if a syndication site only requests positive reviews. Will this be noted on the syndication site? I am guessing not and that's where my ethical concern begins. I could understand if a customer wanted to purchase one "highlight" review for their site, but outside of that, should not be able to purchase just one type of review. In this case, it feels like Payperpost using video.

Imagine visiting buy.com to buy your new gadget. You see two video reviews and play both. They tell you how great the product is. You buy it. It dies. Turns out ExpoTv had 100 reviews, of which 98 were negative but you never saw those.

So CN readers, chime in? Do you think it's ok for ExpoTv to offer only positive or negative reviews to its syndication sites?