We could use more "detached observers"...

 

There are many types of newspaper editors.  Some are crusading ideologues . . . Some are the opposite: they like power and their proximity to it . . .

     And then there are those who are charmed and amused by the world and delight in charming and amusing others.  They tend to be skeptical of both orthodoxies and heresies, and they are earnest in their desire to seek truth and promote public betterment (as well as sell papers).  There fits Franklin.  He was graced—and afflicted—with the trait so common to journalists, especially ones who have read Swift and Addison once too often, of wanting to participate in the world while also remaining a detached observer.  As a journalist he could step out of scene, even one that passionately engaged him, and comment on it, or on himself, with a droll irony.  The depths of his beliefs were often concealed by his knack for engaging in a knowing wink.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life