MIAMI  The six teenage girls accused of beating a classmate and filming the attack for the Internet made their first court appearance on Friday, looking down and occasionally covering their faces with their hands and hair to avoid a gaggle of cameras.

The six girls were seen by the judge via video uplink from the jail where they were being held. They and two male classmates were charged as adults with battery and kidnapping in the March 30 attack in Lakeland, a lower-middle-class town in Central Florida. The girls’ sudden display of shame  like the order against talking to the news media that Judge Angela Cowden placed on local officials  could hardly offset the case’s mutation into a media juggernaut.

The beating left 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay, a cheerleader, with a concussion and two black eyes. The combination of violence, girls, video and criticism of the Web seems to have made the case a magnet for attention and outrage.

Since the teenagers were arrested just over a week ago, Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, CNN and NBC’s “Today” show have focused on the incident, with anchors often describing how hard the beating was to watch, even as clips of the attack played over and over on screen.