More than 12 hours after “Starting Point,” CNN’s Soledad O’Brien finished her Thursday moderating a town hall on the Trayvon Martin killing.

TVNewser attended the taping in front of a live studio audience at Time Warner Center. The more than two-and-a-half hour town hall will be condensed into a one hour program airing tonight. Among the panelists were Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump, New York streetfighter Curtis Sliwa, former NAACP president C.L. Bryant and HLN host Jane Velez-Mitchell.

While many of the panelists seemed to take the side of Trayvon Martin, it was left to O’Brien to challenge her guests about George Zimmerman‘s side of things. Zimmerman, the armed neighborhood watchman, has not gone public with his story, leaving that to his lawyer, friends and family members.

One of the night’s most vocal audience reactions came during a discussion of the media’s role in the case, when Geraldo Rivera‘s hoodie comments were played for the crowd. Although O’Brien noted Rivera has since apologized, the panel — including Roland Martin, no stranger to controversy himself — took the Fox News anchor to task for his remarks.

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As the national media intensified its coverage of the Trayvon Martin killing last week, the coverage of the coverage is also going under the microscope.

Geraldo Rivera‘s conclusion on Friday that “the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin‘s death as George Zimmerman was,” resonated all weekend long. Rivera went on with Bill O’Reilly Friday night and doubled down: “My thesis is, parents don’t let your kids go out wearing these damn hoodies because they could attract not only the attention of  the cops but of nut jobs like this George Zimmerman.”

“Fox News Watch” and CNN’s “Reliable Sources” discussed the coverage with “Watch” spending about seven minutes talking about the racial undertones, Pres. Obama’s entry into the discussion and whether it met the threshold of being a national story. The show did not mention their colleague Rivera’s comments.

Rivera’s hoodie thesis did make news on CNN and MSNBC. CNN analyst Roland Martin (among the first to bring the story to the national stage via his voluminous Twitter stream) wore a hoodie during his segment. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry created a tongue-in-cheek “dress code for black safety.” “If you follow these simple rules, you too, can be safe, and even be considered safe to be around,” said Perry.

Howard Kurtz discussed Rivera on “Reliable Sources.” “It’s so ridiculous it almost doesn’t bear commenting on,” said guest Derek McGinty, former ABC News anchor now with WUSA.

And both “Fox News Watch” and “Reliable Sources” mentioned competitor MSNBC and its show host Al Sharpton who is both covering the story and working as an activist on behalf of Trayvon Martin’s family. “How on Earth can Al Sharpton go there, be an activist and stand with the parents and ask people to contribute money and then he does his show and then he speaks at the rally again? How can MSNBC allow that?” asked Kurtz.

The answers after the jump…

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FishbowlDC scoops that Roland Martin‘s suspension from CNN has been lifted.

Martin, a CNN contributor, has been off the air since early February following a series of Tweets that some say were homophobic.

Martin has been spending much of his time off CNN on Twitter. This afternoon he’s been Tweeting about Tweeting about the case of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black Miami teenager who was shot and killed by a white crime watch volunteer in an Orlando-area gated community on Feb. 26. Outrage is growing because the police chief in Sanford, FL held a news conference today saying they do not have enough evidence to charge the shooter, who is white.

While the case has been getting a lot of media attention in the Orlando and Miami markets, the cable news networks have not covered it much. To date, HLN has spent the most time reporting it.

Suspended CNN contributor Roland Martin has made good on his promise to meet with the gay-rights group GLAAD following his controversial Super Bowl comments. Martin talked about his meeting (which took place last week) on his TV One program  “Washington Watch,” and GLAAD responded with a statement addressing the meeting.

[Martin] has committed to meeting with GLAAD and other organizations in the near future for a more substantial dialogue. We support Martin’s commitment to use his media platforms to shed light on the harms of hate-inspired violence and look forward to continuing this dialogue. GLAAD was one of several organizations and LGBT advocates who originally called on Martin to take responsibility for his tweets. We will be reaching out in hopes of working with and involving members of the community in this ongoing discussion.

Update: You can view Martin’s comments on “Washington Watch,” after the jump.

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Roland Martin may be silenced, for now, by CNN brass. But he’s still going gangbusters on the platform that got him intro trouble last week. Just since Midnight, Martin has Tweeted or Retweeted more than 100 times. The NYT’s David Carr, a rather prolific Tweeter himself, writes about the Martin mess in his Monday media column. Carr says he’s figured out where that line is, so he doesn’t cross it:

[E]ven though I am something of a free speech absolutist, partly because my Twitter bio identifies me as someone who writes about media for The New York Times. When I do post on Twitter, I often look at it through the eyes of my boss and his bosses and ask, is this congruent with the journalistic values of the institution — or, more succinctly, will it create a headache for my employer?

Meanwhile, Politico’s Dylan Byers did some digging and found out what happened when another CNN contributor made some controversial comments last month:

For the record, CNN did stop booking Dana Loesch for two-and-a-half weeks after she made comments championing U.S. Marines for urinating on Taliban soldiers and suggesting that she would have done the same.

A pair of social media stories made news this week, and they raise questions about how TV news outlets should–and do–handle social media.

First was CNN contributor Roland Martin and his ill-advised Super Bowl tweets, which ended up getting him suspended from the channel.

Then Sky News and BBC News in the U.K. released social media policies that forbid reporters from breaking news on Twitter, and in the case of Sky, actually forbid reporters from tweeting about anything other than their beats and from retweeting anyone that didn’t work at Sky. Mind you, the rules applied to personal Twitter accounts, not just official Sky News accounts.

We reached out to the three cable news channels to see what their social media policies were.

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Roland Martin, sidelined from CNN for the time-being, will meet with representatives of GLAAD this week following their successful call to have him removed from the network for sending out Tweets they say constitutes gay bashing.

It took two and a half days, from the time the Tweets were sent during the Super Bowl, until CNN’s announcement, that Martin would be suspended. CNN says it was “giving careful consideration” to the matter. But Tampa Bay Times TV critic Eric Deggans, who calls Martin “a friend,” thinks the mess shows an inconsistency on CNN’s part:

[C]onservative commentator Dana Loesch sparked a load of criticism by saying on CNN she would have joined in with U.S. Marines captured in a video urinating on dead Afghans. Despite condemnation of the action by U.S. government and military officials and complaints about her statement, Loesch was not suspended.

But when anchor Rick Sanchez made angry comments during a 2010 radio interview which some said were anti-Semitic (he denied that interpretation), he was fired. And so was Octavia Nasr, a CNN employee who was let go after tweeting of her sorrow over the death of a leader from terrorist group Hezbollah.

It is hard to discern a pattern or set of policies in all these precedents. What determines when someone gets fired or reprimanded? Is it just the difference between who complains about the mistake?

Martin’s suspension from CNN comes as MSNBC continues to weigh the future of its longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan, who has been off the air since last Fall. MSNBC sidelined Buchanan during his book tour. In early January, network president Phil Griffin said he’d soon be meeting with Buchanan to talk about the future, adding, “Pat is a good guy. Some of his ideas are alarming.”

> Update, 2:14pmET: From CNN, “Roland Martin’s tweets were regrettable and offensive. Language that demeans is inconsistent with the values and culture of our organization, and is not tolerated. We have been giving careful consideration to this matter, and Roland will not be appearing on our air for the time being.”

> Original Story: It was business as usual last night for CNN political analyst Roland Martin. He was first chair on the panel discussing the voting in Missouri, Colorado and Minnesota. Meanwhile, there continues to be calls for CNN to remove him from the line-up over some Tweets he sent during the Super Bowl. Those calls remain the loudest from the group that started them, GLAAD, which says the Tweets constituted gay bashing.

Glenn Beck, no stranger to criticism for things he’s said, called Martin “a dope,” and an “idiot.” E!, owned by CNN competitor NBCUniversal, is asking readers in an online poll whether CNN should fire Martin.

CNN has yet to comment on the matter, and, at this point, probably won’t.

For his part, Martin wrote what he hoped would be the “final thoughts” on the issue Monday night.

To those who construed my comment as being anti-gay or homophobic or advancing violence, I’m truly sorry. I can certainly understand how someone could come to a different conclusion than the one I meant.

> More: GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro responds to the suspension:

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CNN political contributor Roland Martin is the subject of a GLAAD call to action with the organization demanding CNN pull Martin from its shows. (Watch the Beckham ad here)

GLAAD says Martin’s social media postings lately are akin to gay bashing — their words. At one point during the Super Bowl last night, Martin wrote:

GLAAD then took to Twitter, and Martin responded back:

TVNewser reached out to CNN which has not commented as of this writing.

> Update, 10:35am: More explanation from Martin, on Twitter:

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“TheGrio’s 100” list was unveiled on “Today” this morning. The list, organized by NBC’s TheGrio.com, honors Black History Month, which begins tomorrow, by spotlighting 100 individuals from various fields that are “the next generation of African-American history makers and industry leaders.”

There are two MSNBCers featured: Melissa Harris-Perry, who will host a weekend show on MSNBC beginning next month, Yvette Miley, the vice president and executive editor of the network. T.J. Holmes, who left CNN for BET in December, also made the list.

People on “TheGrio’s 100″ will be profiled across all NBC News platforms this month, including “Nightly News,” “Today” and all MSNBC programming.