CBS’ chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan appeared on “The Daily Show” last week with a few observations about broadcast coverage of Iraq becoming increasingly scarce in U.S. media, which the NYT picked up in a story on Monday.

Logan suggested that it may be hard for reporters trying to get stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on air to compete with other reports — coverage of arguably one of the most exciting presidential elections in recent history, for example. Or, as she suggested, half-jokingly, Paris Hilton getting arrested.

“You hear that people are tired of hearing about the war, so you have to go against that,” she told host Jon Stewart.

“We may be tired of hearing about this five years later,” she said. “They (the soldiers) still have to go out and do the same job.”

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” she added. (THAT was the sound byte, of course, that got everyone going.)

YouTube edited clip here:

(Watch the full clip on ComedyCentral.com.)

Is she right? Have the American media wrongly shoved stories about Iraq and Afghanistan to the side?

The Times article cites data compiled by Andrew Tyndall that suggests coverage of Iraq by the network giants, CBS, ABC and NBC, has been “massively scaled back this year.”

Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

As in any newsroom, it’s the eternal conflict between the news that is hugely important, socially, politically, economically, and the stuff that sells, like celebrity gossip. Honestly, if I were in a different profession or if I had more time, I could probably make a killing following all the celebrities vacationing in Hawaii around with a video camera.

Even the hand-wringing about race and gender and what it all means in this presidential election — that discussion had raised some of the most interesting questions of the election at the outset, but it has become an obsession and one wonders whether that is even the real news at all.

That’s tangential to what the real issue is, anyway, that is — there are still major unresolved conflicts going on in other parts of the world which are being pushed out of people’s consciousness by empty, easy stories about frivolous stuff.

Anyway, USA TODAY picked up the story, too, and has compiled a good list of blogs that readers can turn to for more news about Iraq.

Shaving her head. Smashing a car with an umbrella. Talking with a fake British accent. Britney Spears may be troubled, but is she about to kick the bucket?

If you’re in the business of breaking news these days, you may not be sure, but you’d better be prepared.

News that the Associated Press has prepared an obituary for the 26-year-old Spears has raised many questions about the business of reporting on death, especially as more and more young celebrities who lead increasingly risky lifestyles become the focus of attention.

Prepared obituaries, detailed biographies of a person’s life often written or compiled months or years before their death, allow newspapers and other media outlets to tell the story of the deceased almost within minutes of their passing.

It’s actually a little creepy. As a television news intern, I spent many slightly morbid hours fast-forwarding through video footage of famous people who are expected to soon leave this world.

But for the most part, prepared written or video obituaries are usually created for older notables — former presidents, Nobel Prize winners or important leaders of other countries.

The popularity of Spears and other young celebrities, like 25-year-old Brad Renfro who died suddenly last week, might be changing that.

For one, young celebrities generate an incredible amount of public interest, often because of their bizarre behavior. It is also this bizarre and frequently dangerous behavior that make many question whether they’ll meet untimely ends like other young stars, including James Dean, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

As the AP reports, the sudden passing of 39-year-old Anna Nicole Smith from a drug overdose last year (and the media frenzy it created) was a “‘wake-up call’ to be prepared to report immediately on any high-profile person with a public history of troubled behavior.”

Some might think of it as prematurely condemning a young celebrity to her doom, but with the competition for breaking news being so fierce, you can’t blame them for wanting to be prepared.

Thoughts?