"Balanced" is a very subjective term, it basically means "in a one-dimensional political space their positions fall both to the left and to the right of me".

If you look at the interests of a think tank like the CFR I don't think it makes much sense to think in terms of left and right.

If I look at CFR coverage of Ukraine, than asking whether it's right or left isn't helpful because it tells you little about the interests that the CFR has on Ukrainian politics. In the Ukraine it might work because there's fascists against communists and you have a clear left right split.

If you look at a country like China or Egypt it doesn't work because the interested of the multinational banks and oil companies aren't left or right. There corporatist if you want to use a word.

On the other hand neither yourself no myself have stakes into what happens in the conflict in the Ukraine, so in some sense we can be more balanced. A random sampling of LW opinions is likely to be more balanced than a random sampling of CFR articles.

When seeking to get a reasonable picture it's always good to know the interests of the source you are reading.