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Comment by keville | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for this; am local and heard a bit about this tax yesterday but no news outlet seemed to think this detail was as relevant as we do.

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If I was a billionaire, I would create a news site called "Who, What, Why, and How" that answered all four questions in detail for every news item. No opinion (Lord knows you can get that elsewhere), just sourced facts and original documents. Pointers to previous articles via a timeline in the sidebar.

Ahh, to dream.....

The answer to "Why?" for real news items involving human action is always a matter of opinion. (Of course, you can have a "sourced fact" about someone's opinion or claim of what the "Why?" is, but mainstream news sources usually do that now.)

I get what you're saying but, I'm thinking of a little simpler version of the why. In this article we have lawmakers who have introduced a tax, and the why is basically their opinion and reason for the introduction. You can say they are right or wrong, but the why of the bills introduction is their beliefs.

> and the why is basically their opinion and reason for the introduction.

You mean, their stated rationale for the introduction? Because their actual beliefs and their actual reason for the introduction may be very different, and often is a matter of controversy.

Their stated rationale (since we aren't mind readers and we can only go by statements). If they're lying, well, it happens and I guess you might find it in a followup. Frankly, their why is often the least important thing on the list.

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