Did mainstream media just make a decision to downplay the protests? Was there some poll? Did the ratings come in?

Did the events in Madison, Wisconsin — with the toppling of a statue to the abstraction of progress and a statute of an antislavery hero — suddenly wake everyone up to the downside of encouraging chaos?

I'm looking at The NYT and The Washington Post, and all the top stories are about Covid19 — the big story that the protests had overcome and submerged. Covid is back with a vengeance.

On the WaPo home page, the "above the fold" area is full of Covid19 headlines. Then there are a few things about the 2020 elections, something about Michael Flynn, something about the Palestinians, and — this is the closest we get to the protests — the defeat of Tim Scott's police reform bill. Scrolling past the top screen, there's "Trump lashes out at Black Lives Matter in two tweets/The president accused one of the movement’s members of treason and lamented alleged plans for a new mural in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan that honors the cause" and "Blackface has long been an issue in comedy/Look no further than SNL" — both racial but still not about whatever protests/riots might be happening. Scrolling further, I'm reading many many headlines, but nothing about the protests. Finally, near the bottom, in tiny print, I see "Perspective/Toppling more statues isn’t working when there’s other work to be done." That's all there is right now, I believe.

On the NYT home page, the entire "above the fold" space is devoted to Covid19. After that, there is one protest-related story — "How the Philadelphia Police Tear-Gassed Trapped Protesters" — but it's focused on police tactics and grouped with a couple other stories about police tactics that happened outside of the protests. There's also a set of 3 headlines about "The Debate on Statues." That's the sober issue of whether they should they be removed, not the exciting drama of a mob tearing them down in the night. There are 11 headlines for opinion columns, and only one is at all related to the protests (and not even directly — "We Know How George Flynn Died"). Again, it's about the police. Further down, there's stuff about Louisa May Alcott and Leo Tolstoy and Biden's VP. There's nothing about what's going on in any "autonomous zones" or where anybody marched or rioted.

I really think a big decision was made to stop talking about it! I'm just going to guess: Word got around that the ongoing protests were hurting Democratic Party candidates.

ADDED: Maybe they were waiting for right-wing counter-protesters to come in and provide a place to shift the blame for the chaos or for the police to get tough and drag the attention back onto them where it was in the early days before the protests went to hell. But the riots were occurring in cities like mine where Democratic mayors were holding the police back...

Madison police officers desperately trying to keep the peace during Tuesday night’s Capitol Square riots were told by command to stand down — even as credible reports of radical activists were preparing to firebomb the City-County Building.

And the blame for chaos was remaining  squarely on the protesters. The mainstream-media ultimately realized — I would say —  that celebrating and encouraging that sort of thing was not going to get them where they wanted to go.