Apex Talks: KTV’s Dil Bhusan Pathak talks all things media
On January 12, the Graduate Program of Apex organized an Apex Talks session that featured Mr. Dil Bhusan Pathak, the Editor-in-Chief of Kantipur Television (KTV). Mr. Pathak is widely known as the host of the popular weekly TV talk program Tough Talk with Dil Bhusan Pathak.
Mr. Pathak has more than 30 years of experience in journalism and a decade-plus years of experience in development communication. He thus made for the perfect professional to host an Apex Talks session revolving around media matters. During his session, Mr. Pathak talked about the changing dynamics in the media and communication landscapes, and what the changes meant for business and management students. He divided his session into the following four segments:
Need for media literacy
In this segment, he talked about how the absence of media literacy in this ‘era of misinformation’ was resulting in rampant fake-news consumption by users. He provided a handy barometer that one could use to gauge the veracity of a news platform’s offerings: check for its credibility, reliability, and integrity.
The digital divide
He talked about the existing gap pertaining to access to technology and communication, how such gaps create problems for the society at large, and why world leaders need to come together to bridge this gap.
Political communication
Here, Mr. Pathak explained how the nature of political communication was changing, especially with many political leaders starting to leverage the power of social media. He also presented the case of how Trump, with the help of Cambridge Analytica, was able to influence public opinion during the US elections.
Role of social media in personal life
In this section, he focused primarily on how social media has changed the discourse in the personal and public spheres. He also delved into how social media was being used by businesses for everything from identifying and influencing their target audience to tracking their behavior and building their brand. He urged everyone to internalize the adage ‘Information Empowers People’, and to use social media as a tool of empowerment.
Q&A session
Towards the end of the event, Mr. Pathak conducted an interactive session, during which he answered a host of questions raised by the audience. The questions had to do with the safety of the common people on social media, the threats posed by digital media to legacy media, the often overlooked business segment in news media, and the future of traditional media, among others.
