The distinction was meaningful once, but the line is getting increasingly blurred to the point where I dont think it is useful today.
historically, scripting languages are interpreted, programming langauages are compiled. But with the advent of VM's and JIT, the line is increasingly blurred.
scripting is when an existing application or tool is manipulated programatically (e.g. office macros), rather than building an app from scratch. Again the line is getting blurred, because libraries and frameworks means that everybody is building on existing tools. Also, API's allow you to use traditional compiled languages to manipulate applications, eg. in Office you can now automate using .net, which I supppose means you can write Excel macros in managed C++.
languages tend to outgrow their niche. Perl was concieved as a scripting language for text manipulation, but has since grown into a full-fledged programming language.
scripting languages have traditionally been higher-level with features like garbage collection and implicit typing which allowed the developer to focus on the task rather than the metal. Real programming languages like C forced you to be more concerned about memory management and machine architecture. Again, the line is being blurred by newer languages. For example, C# has high-level features like garbage-collection and dynamic types, and low-level features like pointers.
For these reasons scripting has been seen as more accessible, where programming has been seen as more demanding and hard-core. Therefore the term scripting can be used disparagingly, like in "JavaScript is just a scripting languague, not a real programming language" or "he is just a scripter, not a real programmer".
