I'd say it most likely has to do with the history of US and Russia relations painting perceptions of Russia. But I've definitely noticed a fairly deliberate eff

I'd say it most likely has to do with the history of US and Russia relations painting perceptions of Russia. But I've definitely noticed a fairly deliberate effort from some sources to paint the absolute worst picture of Sochi. For example there was a popular Reddit thread in which one person was publicizing lots of pictures of the trashiest, roughest, most under construction areas of the city. Another Reddit poster claiming to actually live there followed up with a response full of his own pictures of nice areas criticizing the OP for cherry picking specific pictures to make Sochi look bad. But frankly between the stray dog killings, the seemingly rough state of hotels as publicized by Olympic journalists, this hacking scare, and Russia's vehemently anti LGBT policies there is a lot to criticize about Russia and not as much for the social and news media to praise.