An article on FoxNews.com about the Duke lacrosse case includes some of the worst reporting I’ve read on the case:

Defense attorneys have said time-stamped photos taken the night of the party show that the alleged victim was injured and impaired before she arrived. Police recordings also indicate that the alleged victim was “just passed out drunk” in someone else’s car in the early hours of March 14, after the alleged assault took place.

Defense attorneys have refuted most points made by the accuser. She claims she lost some of her fingernails in the alleged attack, yet the team claims they must have fallen off. Although there were reports of nail polish on the banister of the house where the woman claims the incident took place — which the prosecution could point to as signs of a struggle — the counter argument is that the woman was painting her fingernails at the party and got nail polish on the banister herself.

There’s also word that one of the defense photos shows the accuser walking out of the house with the nail polish.

At every turn, the Fox News report is hostile to the accuser. First, the police recordings don’t “indicate” that the victim was “just passed out drunk”; they establish only that a police officer thought that she was. Other sources have claimed she might have been slipped a date rape drug. We simply don’t know.

Second, it is absurd to claim “[d]efense attorneys have refuted most points made by the accuser.” We don’t know what points the accuser has made; she only made a few comments to the press. And we certainly don’t know with any certainty that the claims she has made are false, though questions have been raised.

Finally, the only evidence that Fox News provides to support its claim that “[d]efense attorneys have refuted most points made by the accuser” pertain to her fingernails. Since when did fingernail evidence become dispositive in rape cases? Fox then implies that she is lying about her fingernails, writing, “She claims she lost some of her fingernails in the alleged attack, yet the team claims they must have fallen off.” In the context of the previous sentence, this statement suggests that we know the team is right, which has not been established. The rest of the discussion of nail polish is speculation and hearsay.

Was this written by an intern? Sean Hannity? Inquiring media critics want to know.