Opening statements began Tuesday in Oakland: 29 state attorneys general versus Meta, over the claim that Instagram and Facebook were deliberately engineered to hook children. Six weeks, Zuckerberg on the witness list, and a proposed penalty CNN describes as nearly as much as Meta is worth on Wall Street. That's the last you'll hear about the case itself, because the interesting fight today happened in the headlines — where every single outlet had to answer one question before publishing: is this an ADDICTION trial, or a CHILD SAFETY trial? * That's not a style choice. "Addiction" is the states' entire case — that the infinite scroll, the likes, the notifications were designed to hook kids on purpose. "Safety" is Meta's entire defense — a thing the company builds tools for, works hard on, cares deeply about. Pick a noun, pick a side. Here's who picked what. * CNN went all in: "Meta is back in the courtroom to face its biggest social media addiction trial yet." No 'alleged,' no quote marks around addiction — and 'back in the courtroom,' like a boxer returning to a ring he keeps losing in. CNN's body copy also did the most actual journalism of the day-one crop: it's where you'll find the internal Meta document a California prosecutor told the jury is called "the young ones are the best ones." Somewhere a Meta comms person read that sentence and aged a decade. * The BBC: "Meta social media addiction trial to begin as Instagram and Facebook could be forced to change." Addiction, unhedged — plus a consequences frame. The BBC is telling you why to care: the apps in your pocket might come out of this courtroom different. It even ran an explainer video on how the trial "could change Instagram for young people." Service journalism, genuinely. * The New York Times split the difference with lawyerly precision: "Meta to Stand Trial Over Claims It Addicted Children to Social Media." The strong verb is there — ADDICTED, past tense, with CHILDREN as the object — but wrapped in "Over Claims," the attribution bubble-wrap. It's the most legally correct headline of the bunch and it reads like it was reviewed by three floors of lawyers, which it probably was. * Fox Business: "Meta heads to trial over alleged social media addiction, risks to children." Note the double airbag: "alleged" AND the flattening comma. Fox found room for a hedge CNN and the BBC didn't need. Still — addiction made the headline, which brings us to the only major desk where it didn't. * The Wall Street Journal: "Massive Child Safety Trial Against Meta Starts in Federal Court." Read that again. The states' signature allegation — the word their entire theory of the case lives in — is gone. In its place: "child safety," which is, word for word, the vocabulary of Meta's defense. Meta's own spokesperson talks about how the company builds "strong protections for teens"; the AGs talk about addiction-by-design. The Journal's headline noun belongs to one of those camps, and it's not the one suing. The drama got outsourced to "Massive" — size instead of substance, a big trial about nothing in particular. * Is "addiction trial" perfectly neutral? No — that's the plaintiffs' word, and the NYT's "claims" is arguably the cleanest needle-threading in the set. But there's a difference between adopting the accusation as shorthand for a case that IS the accusation, and quietly replacing it with the defendant's preferred noun. One is a shortcut. The other is a favor. * And the Guardian? It skipped the day-one courtroom stenography entirely and published something better: "Reel-ing it in: Meta is paying influencers to promote teen accounts" — a report, built on Tech Transparency Project research, showing that whenever a government starts discussing teen social-media rules, Meta starts recruiting parenting influencers to argue against restrictions, camping-themed Sydney harbour event and all. On the day Meta's lawyers argued in court that nobody can prove its products harm teens, the Guardian was documenting the machine Meta built to make sure you keep hearing exactly that. The trial will take six weeks. That story already has a verdict.