How's it being presented across the media over there? What are the news channels saying?
First off, I am rather disconnected from the kind of media outlets that would be providing immediate coverage of this, but between this thread, my family, and certain email newsletters I can begin to piece it together. Plus, I was away from home for the last few days.
So take a few grains of salt with all this.
From what I gather, based primarily on people's reactions to much of it: It seems that any kind of sabotaging/derailing of the protests by outside parties, be they opportunistic, antagonistic, or plainly irresponsible - it seems this kind of outside influence has been enough to convince many people (and maybe there can be drawn, statistically, some age/generational divide) that the protests do more harm than good, because the protests seem to be conflated with the riots. This conflation, I must say, whether in theory or practice or both, seems a damned near sure-fire way to tilt the opinion of the masses against the movement behind the protests. If you can conflate the agendas of the protestors with the rioters, although some people undoubtedly qualify as both, you can tarnish the integrity of the protest.
As a tactics of control, it almost seems bulletproof: all you really need to do is add more flak and fire to the mix (and you don't even need to do it that strategically) and can effectively obfuscate and ultimately illegitimize (?) an otherwise genuine, even peaceful activism.
To risk being redundant: it doesn't seem to require much organization to derail the kinds of movement these protests represent/embody - all you need to do is stir things up. Then, those who would otherwise have held fast to their agenda of protest - they are now forced to clarify their assertions, to distill them from the ever-heightening cacophony of destruction around them.
This is why I was asking you all about what prospects the movement, here BLM, has of preserving their intended message amidst all the noise. Much of the imbalance here (BLM having a disproportionately more difficult task of retaining their message, as opposed to the comparatively simple task of sullying said message) seems to boil down to this: organization is more difficult than disorganization.
edit: it is interesting that, usually, one would associate organization with control and disorganization with revolt... Here it seems the roles are reversed
But to really answer the question, it seems that the news coverage sheds light on unfavorable collateral damage, small business losses etc, to enough of an extent as to demonize the rioters and, unfortunately and perhaps unintentionally, generalize the whole shebang as a clusterfuck, which, clearly, it is - but must the signal be lost in the noise?