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.

YouTube May Fan The Fire, But It Doesn't Force The Hand

I don't even know what to say about this video, about 6 teenage girls in Lakeland beating another girl. The father of the victim spoke out in this story. He makes some good points and to be honest, is a lot more composed than I would be if a group of girls beat my daughter. There is some truth to the fact the girls may not have beaten this girl so severely if they didn't have a great place to boast about it, such as youtube.

I'm not a violent person, so I have to say I really just don't understand fighting at all, but one of the suspects mothers justified her daughter's actions with this statement (from this article):

"The mother of one of the girls said the victim was the first to post threats online.'She said she was going to kick their you-know-whats and how slutty they are and calling them much worse names than sluts,' mother Christina Garcia said."

Yeah, because that totally makes it ok that your daughter brutally attacked a defenseless girl.
In related news, here is a sample of other similar stories I found on CNN today:

MySpace Shows Teacher Getting Beaten

Kids beat their art teacher and posted the video on MySpace, principal said teacher provoked the students...

2 Teen Girls To Face Charges In Grove City Hit List

2 teen girls make a list of people to murder...they may get expelled.

3rd grader speaks out about plot to harm teacher

Nine 8-year-olds plotted to kill their teacher...