Over the past two years, The New York Times has stumbled badly in its coverage of the natural gas revolution and fracking debate. Jon Entine, senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University, reports.

Displaying little of the contextualized reporting that the paper, at its best, is renowned for, the Times has run numerous articles in its “Drilling Down” series and elsewhere, simplistically framing shale gas extraction as an environmental disaster-in-progress.

Newly-minted natural gas beat reporter Ian Urbina has focused exclusively on the negative—“the risks of natural-gas drilling” the descriptor on the series page notes—rather than examining both the risks and benefits of the shale gas bonanza.

The questionable reporting kicked off in spring 2011 when the Times hyped the research of once obscure Cornell University professor Robert Howarth whose anti-shale gas activism and out-of-the-mainstream findings have been contested by independent researchers, including at environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund; a research team at MIT; the National Energy Technology Lab, and independent energy commentators such as Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Times coverage was so widely recognized as biased that the Times’ public editor at that time, Arthur Brisbane, raked the paper and the reporter over the coals in two searing commentaries.

The Times still hasn’t rebalanced its coverage. Just last month, it ignored a new report for the European Union examining the potential climate impact from shale gas development that further marginalizes Howarth’s thesis, concluding that shale gas has “significantly” lower emissions than coal when burned for electricity.

Spreading anti-shale gas bias at the Times?

Now, these institutionalized bias concerns appear to be spreading to other parts of the Times, which should otherwise be insulated from an ideological framing focus. The Times’ “Learning Network,” which is a blog set up to provide teachers and students with news-based supplemental information on challenging issues, recently released what it called a “Fuel for Debate” lesson plan.

In theory, the Learning Network is an admirable public outreach effort—when it fulfills its mission. But when it falls short, it can actually do more harm than good mostly because the Times’ name confers an aura of objectivity and fairness. In this case, the Times falls far short of that standard in its discussion of the controversy over shale gas and the extraction technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The authors—Alison Fromme, Jennifer Cutraro and Katherine Schulten (who have no expertise in this area and little combined science reporting experience)—make the prejudicial choice of focusing almost exclusively on the controversy rather than on the broad issue in all its glory and warts—adopting, as did Ian Urbina, the narrative of the shale gas critics.

By all measure, the discovery of deep reservoirs of shale gas in the United States and around the world is economically and politically transformative—for better and possibly for worse. It’s a geo-political game changer with the most democratic countries of the world, including the United States, poised to be the big economic winners. Natural gas flooding into domestic pipelines has dramatically cut energy bills for homeowners and businesses alike, while redrawing global energy relationships. The US now imports only 40% of its oil, down from roughly 60% seven years ago—the direct consequence of the natural gas boom and the shift from oil to natural gas usage. With the emergence of China and India as world economic powers, gas exports will likely provide the US with a major bargaining chip in trade talks. The shale gas boom has already resulted in the construction of dozens of new extraction and production facilities in energy and chemicals, creating tens of thousands of jobs, with potentially hundreds of thousands of more to come in energy and related industries.

Who are the big losers? Coal companies; often-unpredictable oil suppliers in the Middle East, African and Venezuela; and Russia’s Gazprom, which has had an energy stranglehold on much of Europe and Asia. Previously energy-starved Europe, particularly in the east, may yet become energy independent. Israel, which had no natural energy production of its own 15 years ago, is on the verge of becoming a net energy exporter on the way to emerging as the next great Middle East energy superpower, eclipsing the desert oil empires by mid-century.