Your source is biased, bro

Congrats to Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia for making the cut

That's also the list of countries that have better internet than Australia.
- Last I remember, the Baltic states have better internet than most of Europe and the US.
- There has to be more than that with better internet
Cyprus too. The EU's farthest eastern outpost. 100km from Beirut, Lebanon.

Almost like news written in english tends to focus on english-speaking countries and their allies

The obvious context of this meme is articles that express the "consensus opinion of the international community" on some foreign issue. Like "international community condemns antisemetic criticism of Israel." Or "international community condemns Niger coup, calls for original government to be reinstated so France can keep buying cheap Uranium from the second poorest country on the planet."
Was about to say. Oh my God the interconnected western world cares about the western world!
More news at 11.
oh yeah that must be it.
Yeah fuck my local news station for covering local news. It should only be coverage about places that I will never go to, issues I have no control over, and be an exercise in guilt and self-righteous masturbation for the people running it.

let's tune into Radio Saudi Arabia and find the real thuth! /s

why should I pretend like I give a shit about the third world when American media tells me everything I want to hear /s
- Hasn't the Israel-Palestine thing dominated American media recently?
Only Ham operators know the truth.
- Personally I find bacon operators more credible.

South Korea is pretty good about pumping out culturally relevant stuff too. Honestly I'd say they do it better than Japan these days (not that I'm personally interested in stuff like k-pop, but it's clearly huge)

Korea is certainly ascendant but I doubt they've passed Japan in cultural exports. At least in the US, there is anime and Sushi in basically every population center these days, whereas Korean BBQ and chicken are still mostly popular in large urban areas (where sushi is still way more popular).
Genuine question: How exactly are they more culturally relevant than Japan besides K-pop and maybe Korean novels? When it comes to matters besides entertainment, I guess I'm a little clueless.
- Their movie industry seems to be on the rise, too. Not sure I'd say they're outpacing Japan though
- Not the OP, but I think that's exactly what they're talking about, entertainment. I don't know if Korea has overtaken Japan in that sphere, but it's certainly significant. I'd also point out that Korea's COVID response was so organized that there was a period of time that it was being looked to and mentioned in the media which is culturally relevant (kinda like pointing out the Finnish education system or the German reputation for engineering).

Idk, I feel like Al Jazeera gets quite a bit of visibility and has a good amount of credibility, but Qatar isn't on this map.

Credibility? It's Qatari state media
- It is, so you definitely want to keep that in mind when consuming their content. On the flipside, they have access to sources in the Middle East that your big mainstream western media organizations can only dream about, so you don't want to ignore them entirely either. There are ways to be smart about it.

South Korea tends to make the cut also

The person who made this super accurate informative map must hate kimichi
Damn those Samsungs man, I need to get me some of those along with those cars...

I like to call this "The Commonwealth and Friends"

no dictators, no worries.

yeah,
these are the democracies that invaded Iraq/Libya to install a democracy.
I keep having to remind myself how much good it did to the people of Iraq/Libya.
- and we all remember what a paradise those countries were. man, that time gadaffis son killed a waiter because he spilled soup. you miss him?
- Iraq is absolutely a functioning democracy and not a dictatorship right now.
  Libya would be if it actually got invaded, which 100% should have happened. UN forces not taking control of the situation is a huge stain on the UN.
- Yeah, Iraqis miss saddam so much don’t they? Especially the Kurds.
- Japan invaded Iraq and Libya?
America is a dictatorship of money disguised as a democracy, and the others are vassal states in lockstep with American foreign policy. Most of them have colonized and exploited the rest of the world for centuries and they're still doing it now, to the tune of over $10 trillion a year in net extraction from the global south.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.
"no dictators"

I guess I should be less surprised how this meme is sailing over people's heads in here

I’ve had to stop myself from replying “woosh” to a lot of comments.
- If a comedian gets up and no one laughs it isnt the audience's fault.
- Me reading this comment a second after replying "whoosh" to a comment: face -> palm.

!mapsWithNZ

All Kiwis celebrating rn!

I still don’t know where they got cigarettes in that movie.
- edit: forum link
  Great question!
  Random video and forum with question:
  https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/38872/how-did-the-smokers-have-all-of-those-cigarettes-in-waterworld#38884
  WaterWorld, How many Cigarettes did the Smokers have? [6:06 | historicalnerd] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pDZK9JGJEeE
- I feel the same about the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Was there a cigarette ship in the fleet or something?

Is this post done in relation to some news story that just occurred?

Or is this just a generic First World versus Third World post?

It's the ladder, then they missed a few First World countries on that map.

I think its pretty close to a map of countries that don't recognise Palestine, or who continue to benefit from colonialism or globalisation.
- I think its pretty close to a map of countries that don’t recognise Palestine, or who continue to benefit from colonialism or globalisation.
  Ah, okay.
  For what it's worth, as someone who lives in the US, don't just believe what you're hearing on CNN (etc.), that is very one-sided Pro-Israeli.
  There are plenty of people who want to see Hamas destroyed, but not the Palestinians. They want the Palestinians to live free like any other Nation on this Earth, and in happiness, and absolutely hate seeing what's happening to them right now.

'Western' media is known in the outside world to report the horrific truth AFTER a war has ended. Or they just wait until enough people make a stink about it, look at Ukraine in their second war.

Just look at what happened in the Bosnian war, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Africa, Asia... And the atrocities committed there were systematically underreported. Sure, they'll write a few uninspired paragraphs about it and move on.

I'm not saying Eastern media isn't biased, they report more emotional so you have to filter that out. And it's an active war, so they might get some misinformation. But over the years they proved to be more often than not right after everything's done. (Looking at you Srebrenica and all the US wars).

Then the Western media swoops in and makes some documentaries about facts most people with a satellite dish or a second language already knew. Thoughts and Prayers.

After the Ukrainian war started this changed. It's the first time everybody and their mother can follow the war while it's happening.

Now it's happening again in Gaza, but journalists are getting killed en masse because the other side knows about it.

I really recommend everyone to read and watch different sources from different countries/languages and make up their own mind. There's Google translate if you can't speak several languages.

I don't know what news you read but what you're saying is wrong - there definitely has been extensive news coverage on all the wars and conflicts you mentioned, it's just a matter of reading them.
For christ sake Bosnian war was ended by the west when the public pressure to stop a literal genocide grew too large, the massacre of Srebrenica being a massive catalyst to it. How "eastern media" was suddenly more right about it than western sources who actually were there is a point I either misunderstand or, more likely, you don't know what you're talking about.
Also calling eastern media "more emotional" has that little subtle bit of racism, really putting the irony as the icing on this horrible comment.
There are many reasons to read all media with the assumption that it is biased but this isn't it.
the first time everybody and their mother can follow the war while it’s happening
You're thinking of the Gulf War. The invasion of Iraq was literally televised (almost) live everywhere on the world. Vietnam also had an extremely high reporting rate which contributed to the anti-war protests and movement in the US and the eventual withdrawal.
Also, targeting journalist to kill them is an old-time tradition amongst war criminals ever since the journalist profession was defined in the like XVII century.

What do you think "international" means?

whoosh...

New Zealand is happy to be included

"US liberals would be far right anywhere else in the world!"

The world:

They absolutely would not be far right in Japan and a few more on this map, but they would be right to far right in a lot of countries not on the map too.
- I'm mostly poking fun. Some people will say rest of the world and really just mean Western Europe. You're mostly right though. I think economically, yes, definitely right or at least right of center. Socially though, very left. LGBT rights and civil equality and refugee acceptance are sadly not the norm. We've still got serious conservative parties pushing against them.
  It's honestly a hard thing to distill down to one metric. And if you want to consider the cultural context too, it gets even more difficult. People like using the whole world in comparisons, but it's rather complex to accurately do that here.

You never hear about China or Russia?

- you dropped /s
- Much is known of the causes of certain things happening around the world.
  By looking at leaked documents and reporting from know journalists that live in many different countries.
  I think your comment is /s, but not sure, hahaha
  Hope we all keep learning and have a great day!
- Yes, that does sound like South Korea, doesn't it?
It seems like media is controlled by a small number of people, not sure if they have anything in common.
They do.
They're capital owners.
- Yes, I agree.
  May be I should have added "..." or made it more clear, that yes they do share things in common.
  My fault on that end, thanks for pointing it out!
Their commonality is their money and conspiring to get more by any means.
I'm assuming you meant to put a /s yeah?

Unless you're talking about the UN, of course, in which case the map in the picture us essentially inverted.