If you have followed events in Hong Kong for several decades, then you know this name — Jimmy Lai.

Journalists certainly should know that name, since this free-swinging billionaire founded Apple Daily, one of the city’s most popular newspapers. Using his clout as a businessman and as a publisher, he has been one of the most outspoken defenders of human rights in the face of crackdowns by Communist authorities.

One other thing: Lai is concerned about freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. There’s a logical reason for that, since he is an outspoken Catholic and one of Hong Kong’s best known Christian leaders. See this recent Catholic News Agency story: “Catholic Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai — ‘The Lord is suffering with me’.”

Surely journalists know that Lai wears several hats during pro-democracy protests — a role that has landed him in jail, without bail. To state this in American terms, Lai is trying to promote both halves of the First Amendment, since freedom of conscience affects both the press and religious institutions. That has been obvious during all the hymn-singing (click here for Julia Duin post on this topic) in Hong Kong protests.

Don’t elite journalists know all of that?

It would appear that this is not the case, considering a faith-free story that ran recently at The New York Times with this headline: “Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong Media Tycoon, Is Denied Bail on Fraud Charge — Mr. Lai, who founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was ordered jailed until April.” Here is some crucial material at the top of the story, which has a Hong Kong dateline:

The detention of Mr. Lai, 72, came a day after three leading Hong Kong activists were sentenced to prison for participating in a protest last year, the latest blow to the territory’s pro-democracy movement.

The Chinese government imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong at the end of June, and Mr. Lai became the law’s most high-profile target in August, when he was arrested along with his two sons and four executives of his media company, Next Digital.

But the new fraud charges are unrelated to the security law. Rather, they accuse Mr. Lai of violating the terms of the lease of Next Digital’s headquarters, the public broadcaster RTHK reported.

This is a classic, and rather obvious, example of what GetReligion writers have, since Day 1, called a “ghost” — as in a crucial religion-news hook that is mysteriously missing in an important story.

In this case, the “ghost” is larger than Lai. Note this short Times summary of what has been happening in Hong Kong in recent years.

The protests that roiled Hong Kong have largely quieted this year because of social distancing restrictions, aggressive police tactics and the new security law. More than two dozen people have been arrested under the law. Beijing authorized the removal of four pro-democracy lawmakers last month, which prompted the mass resignation of the pro-democracy camp from the Hong Kong legislature.

That’s a good term — “pro-democracy camp.” However, there is more to that cause than politics.

Then again, there is another religion-beat angle in this story that really deserves coverage.

Here’s the edgy way to state this question: Maybe Lai is the wrong kind of Catholic activist? After all, he has been very vocal, in social media, about his views of Vatican policies linked to religious freedom in China.

So maybe this is another example of a larger trend seen in journalism over the past decade or so in which people who fight for the old liberalism — human rights linked to “free speech” and “religious liberty” (inside scare quotes) — are suddenly viewed as right-wing activists.

I mean, note the double-decker headline on this William McGurn opinion piece at the (wait for it) Wall Street Journal:

The Silence of Pope Francis

Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai goes to jail — and his shepherd is missing in action.

Here’s a crucial chunk of that, near the top:

Mr. Lai’s jailing has provoked condemnation from figures as diverse as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky and New York Rep. Eliot Engel. They have been joined by journalists, activists and politicians such as the Labour Party’s Sarah Champion and other members of Parliament who … raised Mr. Lai’s plight in Britain’s House of Commons.

But there is one place where China’s bullying elicits only silence: the Vatican. Which is strange, because Jimmy Lai is not only Hong Kong’s most well-known champion of democracy; he is also its most prominent Catholic layman.

Once again let me ask: What is going on here?

Why would the excellent foreign-news desk of the Times overlook the strong religion-angle in the jailing of Lai, as well as the religious-freedom themes in the Hong Kong protests, in general?

Just asking.