Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of “hate speech” as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed acts of hate using the residual category of “not hate, but … ” to signal something that they felt was out of place or unsuitable but did not rise to the legal definition of hate speech and thus was not worth reporting on. This approach ends up challenging journalists’ normative commitments to their communities and exemplifies their desire to avoid an objectivity trap.

Environmental concerns are growing in parts of the rural United States as drinking water wells become contaminated with agrichemicals, and climate change impacts such as drought and extreme rain events disrupt farming practices. Analyzing in‐depth interviews with 29 U.S. rural journalists, we explore the role rural journalists play when reporting on the environment as it relates to agricultural issues. Findings show that reporting about the environment—such as weather, climate change, water shortages, and droughts—appear in rural journalists' stories given those topics' relevance to their rural communities and the social systems forces exerting influence on journalists, yet rural journalists often do not perceive themselves as doing environmental reporting. Rural journalists also report lacking training and resources to do environmental reporting. This study points to the need for more support for rural journalists' environmental reporting as one way to build social change and maintain local community.