The "Truth" Is Not Important

Yesterday I wrote about a group of Florida teenage girls that are accused of beating another girl and videotaping the incident. The news person in me says accused of, yes, obviously there is video, but it's that whole pesky innocent until proven guilty thing. Anyway, CNN is currently rocking this gem as a top headline: Suspects in video beating could get life in prison. This is extremely speculative, and leads the reader to believe that this is currently -- or will be soon-- at trial. This just happened on Tuesday, so this is really just the State Attorney running his mouth despite the gag order issued by the court. Beyond that, the article itself isn't even really about that as much as it is about the epidemic of "girl fighting."

Obviously these girls deserve to be punished, and I do not know enough about the legal system to say what their punishment should be, but I just think the headline is a bit of an exaggeration.