It is the job of a journalist to present the "facts." It is also their job to be sure that the sources of those facts are reliable and, in most cases, those facts should be corroborated by at least one other person.
I'm going to side with Spunky on this. A journalist's job is to report the news. Because of the pressure under which he works (and I've seen this first hand in a couple of press offices) it's very easy to get things wrong.
How much of that news, or feature, is actually fact will often depend on the editorial policies of the media management and ownership.
I'd say it's a little of both. There primary goal news journalist is to be factually objective. If they are factually objective they will be truly balanced. Being balanced doesn't mean giving equal weight to truth and lies.
That said not all journalist are reporters. Personally I think the biggest problem is the current domination of media by non-objective advocacy journalism. Both on the right and left.
I am going to go out on a limb here but I think it has to be both. Just being accurate for one side does not put any other side or sides with any input so that would be slanted.
You can report one side of an event as accurately as possible but to a reader it means nothing without the other side of the argument ... Without accuracy and both sides it's meaningless in my view
First let's dismiss the "balanced" part. It does not exist. Just the fact that a story is reported makes it more important than it would have been if it had not been reported. A picture necessarily excludes everything it does not include, and I'm sure you have seen many examples of that. "Balance" in a news story contradicts the definition.
A reporter's story must be defensible. That sort of implies accuracy, but the accuracy might be an illusion. We have observed that a good buzzword can obscure analysis for fifty years or more. In fact, most news stories are based on buzzwords, and almost nobody bothers to decode them. My news feed on Facebook is constantly harping about picture id for voting. I keep pointing out that you have to pay for a picture id, so that is a poll tax. Nobody gets the message. But it sure makes some dramatic headlines!
Benedict Arnold 