COMM 150: Entertained or informed?

Neil Postman, media critic and author of a book titled "Amusing Ourselves to Death," says "Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world" in part because of television news. (I would add newspapers, magazines and news websites.) "The problem," Postman says, "is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining."

Here's an example the Associated Press posted to the Yahoo! news pages Tuesday. It's about global warming, as complex an issue as the world faces today. The news peg was a United Nations summit on warming. Here's how AP headlined it:

'Arnie,' 'Al' push climate action

And here's the lede, written by AP special correspondent Charles J. Hanley:

UNITED NATIONS - "Arnie" and "Al," Republican and Democrat, shared the world spotlight to press for climate action, adding a touch of star quality to the staid proceedings of a U.N. summit.

The two headliners, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Vice President Al Gore, also highlighted by their presence President Bush's absence from the eight hours of high-level speechmaking Monday on what to do about global warming.

Bush, who did take part later in a small, private U.N. dinner with key players on climate, rejects the idea of international treaty obligations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" blamed for global warming — an idea central to U.N. climate negotiations.

The Republican Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, has taken the lead on emissions caps at the state level, signing legislation mandating such reductions in California.

"One responsibility we all have is action. Action, action, action," the former Hollywood action star said as he helped open the summit, winning warm applause from the assembled presidents and premiers.

The Democrat Gore — a Hollywood figure himself as the lead in the Oscar-winning climate documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" — took his star turn at a summit luncheon, where he cited a lengthening list of global warming's impacts, from the shrinking Arctic ice cap to disappearing lakes in Africa.

"The need to act is now," Gore told delegates to the one-day summit, which drew more than 80 world leaders. "We need a mandate at Bali." ...

Gore was referring the annual U.N. climate treaty conference, scheduled for December in Bali, Indonesia, where the Europeans and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

See what Postman's talking about?

The rest of the story is solid and substantive enough, and the Bali conference will be important. But the AP's treatment of Schwartzenegger and Gore as celebrities -- complete with references to their movies -- is a prime example of packaging news as entertainment.

Here's a question. You don't have to blog it, but do think about it. Would you be surprised to see this story -- or something like it -- mentioned in the 50-point question on the Oct. 10 midterm? Just askin'.