Barbara Walters is a pioneering journalist who has anchored the evening news and traveled the globe interviewing heads of state, so it is fascinating to discover who she thinks is fascinating. She also provides another example of how the lines between news and entertainment have been erased to the detriment of journalism.

Either that or I wouldn’t know fascinating if it danced up to me in a Lady Gaga get-up.

I have to confess that I didn’t watch Walters’ program on the “10 Most Fascinating People of 2009,” so I am basing these assessments on news accounts, for lack of a better term.

Lady Gaga is a pop singer driven by flamboyant fashions and open-mindedness when it comes to sexual partners. Why didn’t Liberace and David Bowie think of that? I had to research Adam Lambert, because I don’t watch “American Idol” or awards shows, specifically the one where he performed a “man on man” kiss. He exclaimed, “I am a homosexual. Deal with it.” Well, that explains the kiss. Kate Gosselin allowed a camera crew to record the disintegration of her marriage. She said she misses them. Tyler Perry is a movie and TV producer who humbly sticks his name in all the titles. He almost cried. So did Glenn Beck, who proclaimed that we’re not having real debates in this country. I guess people are too busy watching his show.

Among Michelle Obama’s guilty pleasures is “really bad TV.” Good news for Beck and Walters.

Sarah Palin is the only returning fascination from last year. Fascinating. Quarterback Brett Favre wasn’t interviewed. Nice audible. Jenny Sanford wasn’t pleased that her husband, the governor of South Carolina, had an affair. So revealing.

Rounding out the top 10 were Michael Jackson’s three children. Their father died and this makes them fascinating.

So there you have it. No Barack Obama, Hamid Karzai or Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top players in the Afghanistan war. No U.S. Sen. Max Baucus or U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe or U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the key politicians in the health care debate. No Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, the two most important players in trying to stitch the economy back together.

Walters tried to head off criticism with this caveat: “The word is fascinating. The word is not newsmaker; the word is not most important; the word is fascinating.”

That’s a fitting epitaph for a career that’s gone from journalist to investigative trivialist.

And in this corner. If you haven’t heard about “The Copenhagen Diagnosis,” you have a valid excuse. Lost amid the furor of the hacked e-mails was the release of this sober assessment of global warming authored by 26 climate scientists. It discusses rapid Arctic sea ice decline, the acceleration of melting ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers and surging greenhouse gas emissions (40 percent higher in 2008 than in 1990).

The full report is at copenhagendiagnosis.org, but, golly, it’s kinda boring. Lots of technical data and charts. Real “sciencey.”

And because it’s so important, it’s not even close to fascinating. So how can the media repackage this issue as entertainment? Turn it into a brawl between Sarah Palin and Al Gore!

“Palin decries climate hoax!” “Gore smacks Palin on warming!” “Will Palin and Gore have a debate?”

Sure, let’s have them duke it out, and on the undercard we can have two climate scientists debate politics.

It’s a match made in media heaven.