A protest organized by Reporters Without Borders in front of the Russian Embassy in Paris in March 2013. Human-rights groups say Olympic preparations include repressive tactics. Michel Euler/AP

Obstruction by government authorities has led to fear and self-censorship among Russian journalists and severely limited coverage of the upcoming Sochi Olympics, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) charged in a report released on Tuesday.

The group, which monitors press freedom worldwide, detailed a repressive climate for journalism in Sochi, where the Winter Games kick off in less than two weeks and where arrests, tapped phones and threats have led to a virtual media silence in Russia on many controversial Olympic-related issues.

The report detailed one case in which a correspondent for a major Russian news agency — who was not named — recently filed three stories from Sochi. One dealt with the arrest of journalist Nikolai Yarst, a case that many saw as politically motivated. A second story detailed malfunctions at a hastily built compound for residents displaced by Olympic construction. A third was about the bad weather headed for the city, where torrential rains have already flooded newly constructed roads.

Yet none of the stories made it to the wires.

“You may have a storm, a twister and even a 9-Richter-scale earthquake. Still, we have to write that all skies are clear over Sochi,” the unnamed correspondent told the CPJ.

Many free speech advocates see that episode as descriptive of hard times for journalism in the Olympic host city. While some reports on corruption, environmental damage, the exploitation of migrant workers and other abuses have emerged, this was largely through the independent documentation of activists, rights groups and foreign journalists. In many cases, both state-controlled and private media in Russia have ignored these issues and reported only on events and statements “officially cleared for coverage,” the CPJ said.

Journalists cited in the report described pro-government television networks staging interviews with people speaking scripted lines but passing them off as off-the-cuff remarks from ordinary Sochi residents. A national TV channel aired a program depicting residents evicted from their homes as “greedy, unscrupulous people trying to blackmail the state.” Human Rights Watch has documented uncompensated and poorly compensated evictions, but the issue has received relatively scarce media attention.

When fear alone doesn’t work, the local branch of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor — the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media — interferes with media organizations, the CPJ said. Since 2012, the agency has started 45 administrative cases against Sochi media outlets, on trivial pretexts like the failure to leave a copy of the paper with local libraries.