Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland (wife of leading neocon Robert Kagan), and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup. ( Read "Distorting Russia - How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine" by Stephen Cohen on The Nation website ). 

As expected, Russia-bashing in the build up to the Sochi Olympic games was the dominant narrative in centrist and 'liberal' media -- from CNN, MSNBC, PBS and NPR to Comedy Central and HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.