For better or for worse, news is a fast business. In fact, news is now made and received so quickly that its average lifespan seems shorter than a fruit fly’s.

Sure, subjects could last back in the good old days, but now any and every issue seems to be labeled “breaking news” one moment, discussed to an insignificant extent the next, then replaced — and most often sent to the news graveyard, never to be mentioned again — as soon as content with more attention-grabbing potential is found to replace it.

There are rare exceptions, such as July’s Michael-mania and Sotomayor-sensation. But, while coverage of the mysterious death of the disturbed pop icon and the Supreme Court nomination of the “wise Latina” have thrived thanks to endless drama, one lasting and meaningful issue seems to have taken the summer’s coverage cake: Iran.

To the average news addict, it would seem that Iran has received more consistent attention, both in print inches and visual minutes, than any other over the last many months. This is little surprise thanks to its inviting concoction of high-drama ingredients: the alleged villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; the alleged underdogs, young non-violent protesters; and the potential existence of what would be an indisputably scary nuclear weapons program.

Deservedly, the bulk of coverage has focused on the protesters — 17 of whom have lost their lives — who are still challenging a kind of “democratic theocracy” hybrid in which religious clerics not only run the government, but have clamped down on the democratic freedoms of speech, assembly and the press.

But just as Iran’s importance keeps it on America’s agenda, another quite similar, quite deserving issue is left off.

This issue is the peaceful protests of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority of Turkic origin who live in northwestern China’s Xinjiang province. Although they are the single largest ethnic group in the mountain- and desert-filled province, accounting for 45 percent of its 20 million population, they do not seem it.

The Uighurs’ protests — which, on July 5, resulted in more than 156 dead and more than 1,000 wounded — stem from the threat to their culture and livelihood posed by government-enforced restrictions and an ever-increasing influx of Han Chinese, who make up 92 percent of all of China and are the largest ethnic group in the world.

Among these restrictions, government authorities have severely limited the number of Uighurs who are allowed to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and have reduced the teaching of the ethnic group’s language, which is written in Arabic script. In addition to these explicit challenges to religion and culture, the Uighurs also face travel limits within China and fewer job opportunities in Xinjiang.

As Dru Gladney, an expert on Xinjiang at Pomona College put it, “The Uighurs are the very bottom of the heap economically in China.” Once a free and dominant majority in their homeland of Xinjiang, they have become second-class citizens.

Sadly, China’s response has been violence.

This crackdown could go too far, however, and with 156 people dead in one day’s worth of riots, most of the world’s powers should agree that it already has.

But without the international uproar that may have come if this had happened a year ago — when the Olympics drew every nation’s eye to China and its human rights record — the Uighurs will continue to see their religious freedom eroded, their economic opportunities diminished and their protests silenced.

Unless, of course, the United States speaks up.

But it won’t.

Why? Because China, unlike Iran, is a nation we literally cannot afford to meddle with. Questionable human rights or not, it is a rising superpower — militarily, demographically and most importantly, economically — that, like it or not, we still need to produce our stuff and buy our debt.

According to the latest data from the Treasury Department, China currently holds more than $801 billion in U.S. securities, by far the international leader.

So when are 156 dead protesters less important to American media than 17?

Apparently — and unfortunately — when they are killed by authorities in a government that ours does not dare to offend.

– Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.