No one takes issue with the "lightheartedness" of the unboxing video. It's that there's no content to it other than crass commercialism. It's an advertisement dressed as editorial.
To be fair to Jason, I think it's nice to see that they are considering evaluating their stance on unboxings or at least are talking about it.
Stephen also seemed to be honest about what led to the unboxing. He made a news value judgement after being sent a LE Halo 4 console. The truth is journalists make mistakes sometimes. Sometimes you make mistakes about news value or you just make flat out dumb mistakes. I've never actually met a journalist that hasn't made at least one dumb mistake during their career. So, while, a lot on GAF see the unboxing, myself included, as poor judgement, there was at least a few people in here saying they like unboxings. I don't personally get it. It was either Jason or Stephen that brought up the question of model revisions and, for example, if it is news worthy to do a hands on thing with, say, the new PS3 slim that was released. IMO, hands-on impressions with any new console revision can be interesting to some extent if it's in the realm of a product review. The thing with LE 360's or any LE console is that they are usually always just the same system with a gimmicky paint job or design. I also have big issues with the advertorial nature of it, especially if the console is provided free of charge.
But again, news value judgements can be wrong. I used to have an editor that would send me out to cover child beauty pageants, the really sleazy Honey Boo-Boo kinds in Holiday Inn conference rooms. I would argue constantly with her that these things weren't newsworthy, but I still got sent to them. I hated covering them, but there were actually people that wanted to read about them as disgusting as it sounds.
I'm glad that Stephen and Kotaku have decided to do a story on this, Sandy permitting. I can see, though, where it can be annoying to them that they partially owned up to their mistake, yet that unboxing screen cap is probably still going to be posted for years to come. I'm not defending them per se, but I see how they can become jaded when they've taken a step, or at least have promised to, in addressing some of our concerns.