The Sun's news desk ran a machine today. In one end went a small, optional tax. Out the other came "Brits face paying HUNDREDS more for UK holidays" and fears of a "jobs bloodbath." Let's watch the machine work, step by step. * First, the input. Andy Burnham's government will let mayors charge a fee on overnight stays — hotels, B&Bs, holiday lets. No mayor has to do it. It's a percentage of the room price, so a cheap B&B adds less than a posh hotel. Edinburgh has charged one since July and is still standing. * Step one: inflate the number. The Sun's own example, sitting in its own story, says the tax could add "£100 or more" to a family break. The headline says "HUNDREDS." £100 went in, hundreds came out. Somewhere between paragraph two and the front door, the money tripled. * Step two: turn a maybe into a done deal. "Brits face paying" — which Brits? Only the ones whose local mayor opts in, at a rate that mayor picks. That's a lot of ifs to fit inside the word "face." * Step three: borrow someone's fear and file the name off. "Fears grow of 'jobs bloodbath'." Whose fears? That's the hotel lobby's own estimate of what a 5% tax might do by 2030, if everywhere adopts it. A trade group's spreadsheet about the next decade, dressed up as a panic sweeping the nation. * So why run the machine? The Sun answers that itself: "The Sun has been campaigning to Stop The Holiday Tax," the article says, mid-story. Credit for wearing the team shirt openly. And here is one more plain fact you might find useful while weighing the fury: the Sun also sells holidays. "Hols from £9.50" — its famous cheap-staycation offer — sits right there in the same page's menu. We are not claiming to know what is in anyone's head. We just think a reader deserves both facts on the same page. * The boring people covered the same facts without the machine. The BBC: "England's mayors to be given power to introduce tourist tax." That's it. * Maybe the tax is a bad idea — that's a real argument, and the Sun is fully entitled to campaign on it. Our problem is the machine: a £100 example inflated to "HUNDREDS," a maybe upgraded to "face paying," a lobby's 2030 spreadsheet dressed as a national panic. In our view, that's not reporting the news. That's turning the volume knob on it.