media - How patriottic can journalists be?

WOW continues its serial on the arrest of New York Times' research Zhao Yan with a piece of Charlotte Li. While I agree with her that comparing China with "donkey droppings", as Mr. Kristof has done in his column in the same paper, there is as much in her piece I do not agree with.
The first time I got a different take on my very European perspective on how journalists should view their own country, was on my first trip in the US, in South Carolina where I watched a game of American football from the press tribune. In the Netherlands journalists at least try to prevent to get nationalistic feelings in their way, as they assess also their own country, government and people in a very critial way. In South Caroline I watched how the whole stadium not only raised to sing the national anthem - that was quite ok with me - but including the press tribune cheered up the very militaristic show before the game. This I had only seen in documentaries on the Third Reich, I felt at the time. Journalists should keep a distance. It was not only in the US I felt at odds with the attitude of many of my colleagues, it was very much comparable to those in China.
What goes wrong in Charlotte Li's piece is that she advises to decide on the basis of facts, but has to admit she is not very much aware of what had happened to Mr. Zhao Yan. "Yes I know little about the detention of journalists in my country," she writes. "But I think the police had proper reasons to arrest Zhao Yan." Journalists should never assume somebody is right, especially not when those people or institutions have a powerful position.