I left this comment at Ian Reid’s article about Vaughn Palmer:

You have of course identified the frustration with [Vaughn] Palmer. He would be easy to ignore if he lacked skills of analysis and communication, along with detailed knowledge of what goes on inside government today and what went on throughout recent political history.

He is an actual expert (not a pretend one like the CKNW/Global financial expert who appeared on the 6pm TV news as I write this.) He is capable of highly intelligent commentary but simply doesn’t deliver it regularly.

He enables others to question whether or not his speech making and consulting enterprises interfere with being a journalist. (Frankly, a too common fault among leading journalists who may demand higher ethical standards from others than from themselves.)

Palmer dumps out the occasional piece that is little more than a précis of backgrounders delivered to him by people interested in promoting a point of view, typically in matter of business, not philosophy.

An example: immediately after IPP lobbyists began a new strategy of misidentifying private power production as primarily an aboriginal initiative, Palmer was on side. An example in this audio clip:

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