Diana Wichtel: Don't turn off TV, learn to read it

Thank God I didn't listen to Sue Kedgley. How often have I had occasion to say those words. She can be hard to avoid. We've seen her on a scooter for Car-Free Day and doing her bit for animal rights by dressing as a cow, being photographed with a piglet and looking inappropriately perky while locked in a battery hen cage.

More recently, Kedgley urged us to switch off in support of international TV Turn-Off Week. Spend some quality time with your children, she urged. Well, it makes a change from the chickens and I promise to take her latest good advice just as soon as I stop grinding my teeth.

As it turns out, I'm glad we declined to release our family from the chains of local television for the prescribed week. We would have missed goggling at the unfolding saga of sacked Maori Television chief executive and secret agent John Davy, the man with the amazing modified background. Disguised as a mild-mannered Canadian, he came to "make a difference". He certainly did.

This was television that covered every genre. It started out as a simple scandal as this newspaper exclusively revealed that the only way to get an MBA from the mythical Denver State University is to purchase it over the internet.

Then it was off to what television does best - farce - as this information rang alarm bells for everyone except, apparently, Maori Television chairman Derek Fox.

Looking increasingly uncomfortable all over the media he was busy blaming, for a while he seemed to be almost as much in denial as his hapless chief exec.

By now it seemed apt that the name of the recruitment firm involved, Millennium People, sounded like a science fiction television series.

Then there was the Holmes interview with John ("I love fantasising") Davy. It wasn't a great interview. We could have read most of what we heard elsewhere, in between having quality time with the children.

But television gave us a chance to "read" Davy. How on earth would he explain this? In one of Holmes' politely expectant pauses, Davy, eyes darting, sucked in nervous air, then wildly claimed to be part of a witness protection programme that for some reason required him to keep his real name but to have comic qualifications.

By now things were turning tragic. The interview, during which Holmes somehow managed to keep an almost straight face, was a lesson only television could have taught. This is how pathetic a bare-faced refusal to accept responsibility for your actions looks. Our leaders should be forced to watch this footage. Often.

The story lurched back to farce again as Michael Cullen revealed Davy was originally only after the job of financial manager until Millennium People suggested he be upgraded to chief executive. And so it goes on - with no one taking responsibility for any of it.

Despite the undeniable entertainment value, it's been a sad business for television. An even bigger scandal is that it's taken this long for this country to have a Maori channel. Ten years ago, my son took some flak at a predominantly white secondary school for wanting to take Maori. Happily, things have changed. There was such a huge turnout for the kapa haka group at my daughter's school this year that the teacher could scarcely cope.

Whatever the rednecks think, these kids will take Maori culture and at least a smattering of the language for granted.

Some have claimed the Davy affair was about Maori-bashing. It wasn't. But we've certainly seen some media-bashing. Derek Fox should be thanking the media. The embarrassment would only have been more excruciating had it taken longer to discover that Denver isn't actually a state.

But then the media, particularly television, are a great all-purpose scapegoat. Every day a new study sets out to show that television makes us fat and passive, yet somehow also aggressive and violent.

No one suggests that we have a book-free week, despite the misery wreaked in the name of such texts as the Bible, the Koran, Mein Kampf and Holmes' autobiography. Regimes such as the Taleban, which ban television altogether, are not noticeably the nicer for it.

Television is pleasurable, which makes it suspect for a start in a nation with its share of puritanical control freaks. Much like Sue Kedgley, it brings images and ideas into our living rooms we'd sometimes rather not see.

But who says you need to switch off to spend quality time with the kids? It's a precious moment in parenting the first time you find yourself laughing with your child at The Simpsons or Mike Hosking.

And I will forever be grateful to The Human Body for breaking the ice on the puberty thing. We could use more local children's programmes, but the Teletubbies speak an international, if scary, language.

True, television often presents children with dodgy values. It also presents endless useful opportunities to discuss these things with your children before they encounter them in the real world.

Switch off by all means but not before you alert your child to the signs and codes of television and point out to them that if you decorate your neighbour's bedroom to look like a Turkish brothel, it will end in tears.

Television can teach a lot about the world and its dangers, including avoiding people like John Davy. To know how to read books is good. To know how to read television is the best way to subvert the medium's endlessly seductive power.