To explain how journalists may temporarily reconfigure professional role performance when the institutional conditions are politically contested, Vytautas Valentinavičius from Kaunas University of Technology developed the concept of the institutional sentinel in this article.

For the backdrop of this study, there is the development in which journalism is under growing pressure not just to defend democratic values, but also institutional conditions that make independent reporting possible. Increasingly, the procedural norms of professional objectivity are insufficient in responding to threats against the autonomy of media institutions themselves (Bennett and Livingston, 2018; Chadwick, 2017; Dragomir, 2019; Waisbord, 2018).

This leads to the situation, where the traditional role of detached observer might come into tension with the need to defend the institution. This raises the question on what kind of journalistic role emerges, when the institutional preconditions have to be defended? Further, this cannot be answered with the binary between an “objective” and “activist” journalist. 

Even objectivity in itself is a multi-layered professional norm consisting of verification, fairness, balance, and procedural discipline (McQuail and Deuze, 2020; Tuchman, 1972; Ward, 2004, 2011; Westerståhl, 1983). Still in the debates, departures from conventional notions of objectivity are often treated as partisan advocacy or being indicative of a general moral turn in journalism – leaving not enough conceptual space for interventions defending autonomy.

To fill this conceptual gap, the article introduces the concept of the institutional sentinel. The author defines it as: “the institutional sentinel as a situationally activated journalistic role-performance logic in which journalists collectively shift from monitorial observation to the public defense of the institutional conditions that enable future impartial reporting when those conditions are perceived to be under procedural threat.”

Institutional sentinel should be distinguished from other, neighboring modes of journalistic intervention. It is not equal to journalism of attachment. Second, it is not identical to engaged or objectively engaged journalism. Third, it is not partisan or journalistic activism for a cause. Fourth, it is narrower than institutional advocacy, broadly defined. 

Sentinel activism in the model is activated by a perception of institutional threat, and its object is to defend the governance and autonomy infrastructure of journalism. It is also periodic rather than permanent, and it is professionally justified as preserving future conditions of impartial journalism. However, there is also a tension: as it is public and visible, it can be attacked as being biased, self-interested, or being elite collusion. 

To illustrate institutional sentinel, the author presents a vignette from Lithuania: the LRT (the Lithuanian public broadcaster) being in conflict in 2025-2026. In it, journalists publicly mobilized against reforms seen as a threat to impartial journalism, illustrating institutional sentinel in action.

The article “Institutional sentinel: Journalistic role performance and the defense of media autonomy under democratic threat” by Vytautas Valentinavičius is in Journalism. (Open access).

Picture: Buckingham Palace, London by Mark Stuckey.

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