Media covers historic gay marriage vote with pride

The historic New York Senate vote to legalize same-sex marriage in New York on Friday night received largely favorable coverage on television--as a pair of cable news anchors popular in the gay community worked overtime. Likewise, the news got wide play on Twitter, where the line between reporting and celebration was understandably blurry.

Rachel Maddow anchored MSNBC's treatment of the news well past the end of her 9 p.m. show, with the 33-29 vote coming in around 10:30.

"What just happened will double the number of people in the United States for whom same-sex marriage is a reality," she said.

Maddow, one of three openly gay cable news personalities, was highly critical of Barack Obama during her coverage. "President Obama is against what just happened," she said, before throwing to MSNBC's regularly scheduled programming, an incredibly ill-timed "Lockup Raw" documentary on gay prison sex.

CNN's Anderson Cooper was hosting his 10 p.m. show when the vote occurred; he stayed on the air for the next hour to cover the reaction in New York and elsewhere.

"Are we the only ones still live on the air?" Cooper asked on Twitter, a subtle dig at MSNBC and Fox News, which, according to TVEyes.com, devoted just two minutes to the vote Friday night. (Fox News did interrupted its two-hour special on the Casey Anthony trial to broadcast an alert on the vote at 10:38 p.m., according to TVNewser.com.)

Despite the late hour, it's worth noting that nearly 50,000 people watched the vote live online at the nysenate.gov site.

On the virtual media industry water cooler known as Twitter, reporters simultaneously celebrated the vote and criticized its coverage.

"Hey MSNBC!" Eric Deggans, television critic for the St. Petersburg Times, wrote. "All goodwill from having compelling Rachel Maddow anchor #ssm vote is gone now that you're airing Lock Up Raw on gay prison sex."

"This is 1 of those nites that journos have to be careful [on Twitter]," New York Times investigative reporter Michael Luo wrote. "Facts, not opinions."

For many, it was nearly impossible to adhere to that ideal. Social media lit up with jubilant status updates, many from New York's Stonewall Inn—which has long served as ground zero of the gay liberation movement.

"The media has been kind of rallying behind the marriage equality movement." Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford said on CNN's Reliable Sources. "I think we're always prone to any civil rights movement. We like it. It's democratic to us, and that's just one of our soft spots."

On Saturday, the gay marriage vote made the front pages of all three major New York newspapers, but the New York Post buried its headline under photos of a police officer grabbing a suicidal woman before she leapt from a building.

The main Post headline: "Don't Do It!"