You can now listen to Antigua News articles!
Witnessing and living through the minute-by-minute horror of the blatant disregard for journalistic integrity displayed by Antiguanewsroom, an online website owned by former journalist, now turned lawyer Brenton Henry, is appalling. Talk about double standards.
Our hard work and exclusives are shamelessly stolen without any attribution or fact-checking. We just posted a story on Google Street View for Antigua and Barbuda, and within minutes, it was stolen without any fact-checking.
We are not just victims of theft but rather targets of lazy and shameless bandits who nonchalantly present our stolen articles to the public without an ounce of remorse.
Antigua News Room (ANR) is a site many years our senior and one that should set an example for journalism in Antigua and Barbuda. Unfortunately, it is the laziest, most dishonest thieving site we have ever seen. Plagiarism appears to be its grounding philosophy.
Our hardworking staffers, six of them to be exact, dedicate countless hours crafting original stories, which ANR shamelessly snatches and publishes without proper attribution. This blatant plagiarism must stop immediately.
ANR’s disregard for our work and failure to acknowledge the original source is unacceptable. Our content is not free for the taking, and we demand that ANR cease this unjust practice without delay. If necessary, we will take further actions to protect our intellectual property.
They publish stories without any fact-checking whatsoever. If we publish a story with something as ludicrous as “Prime Minister resigns and joins the Taliban,” ANR will post it, no questions asked. From watermarked photos, to stealing videos with our ticker.
While we at Antigua News are working hard to build a strong brand and trust with the public, they are dead set on being lazy, shameless, and dishonest in the way they get their content.
We have contacted them over and over. We have partners who want to know if we are copying them, or if they are copying us.
We have sat in rooms with partners and demonstrated in real time that within minutes of us posting a story to antigua.news, it is replicated wholesale, with no attribution on ANR.
Worse, antiguabreakingnews.com or ABN, appears to be in an even longer running copy war with ANR, duplicating content on ANR or vice versa. We don’t know which.
Since our appeals to the management of ANR have been flatly ignored, and since you, our valued audience, have every right to wonder whether we here at antigua.news are producing original journalism as opposed to just replicating exactly what we see elsewhere without attribution, we want to make it abundantly clear: We write it. They copy it.
We have implemented a time stamp on all our stories to demonstrate this point. You can see the date and time at which we posted. We hereby challenge ANR to do the same, as it will show the public that it is they who post after we do, never even having the sense to fact-check, to try and hide their blatant theft.
At antigua.news, we are working hard to keep the trust of our audience, especially the new generation. We do our best to produce the best coverage of daily events in Antigua and Barbuda.
We hire real people (NOT AI). We compensate them for their stories, contribute to the economy, and reinvest every dollar we earn from the website in the pockets of residents.
Conversely, ANR appears to be using significant sponsorship funds, potentially for luxurious living abroad, while profiting from stolen content.
Are their sponsors aware of these actions? Would prominent companies like FLOW, DIGICEL, or KFC want to be associated with such practices? It may be time to investigate this matter.
Similarly, we do our best to demonstrate our worth to our partners, who rightly want to know what separates us from the competition.
Well, what separates us is that our staff actually use the keyboard when they write stories, whilst those posting at ANR are simply using their computer mouse. Their keyboards are gathering dust.
It is unfortunate that things should get to the point where we must publicly air the matter, but it is just as unfortunate that the management at ANR has chosen to ignore our repeated approaches made in an effort to stop the rampant theft of our material—material which we pay our staffers to write, and ANR then benefits from by doing nothing but sitting at a laptop and clicking a mouse.
ANR is a disgrace. They get ahead by ripping off those who actually put effort into their work and invest in their staff.
Who even works for ANR? When did you last see a journalist’s name on a story at ANR? What is the name of the Editor at ANR?
We think they are run by a digital ghost who spends their time in the basement behind a keyboard, ripping off everything they can to make a buck and trying to undermine the work of their competitors (us) by constantly passing it off as their own.
The last we found out was that the website is owned by former journalist Brenton Henry, who is an attorney who lives abroad.
The only thanks we have for them is for recognizing quality when they see it.
The fact that they wait feverishly for our posts each day so that they can copy them word for word tells us as much.
Thanks to them for knowing what decent journalism looks like, even if they abjectly refuse to practice it themselves. Never could we imagine that a member of the media fraternity could lack any integrity whatsoever.
Intellectual property is something we should all be familiar with. Plagiarism is something we all know not to do. So what is it with ANR? We tried speaking directly. It didn’t work. We are now airing the matter publicly. What next? Dear readers, you tell us.
Waw. I read this with emotions. I noticed something was wrong when I read the same stories in three different chat groups. I didn’t know this was the matter. I thought they all worked together. ANR if this is true…then stop. It is not nice.
I have been observing this nonsense for a while now and it really has to stop. Antigua Newsroom is everything journalism should NOT be in 2024. Brenton sits his backside down in Trinidad reaping you guys work and it is not funny. Crime is not only amongst the gangs that are trying to change their ways. This behavior by Antigua Newsroom is criminal, wicked and nasty. Brenton stop your crap.
Yeah but Àntigua News does steal too. So what are trying. Yes you do good work but you steal too.
Stop your crying I may be wrong but everytime they use someone content they attribute the source. CNN takes stories from FOX. They say according to a report in FOX News. It is quite okay to repeat someone’s content. It is not okay to do it without credit. It is that simple.
Why that sounds like something Brenton would say
Shame on you ANR!
What ?!?! ANR you are simply ridiculous
Very unprofessional behaviour
Everybody takes everybody news…lol show business. Tell gaston put laws in place to protect you all instead of just posting stories about him. What has he done for you lately? He should protect the media. The same media who keeps celebrating him. Let me go back and watch the sun 🌞
Really? Only unprofessional people take other people’s news without crediting sources
Actually antigua.news is the only one that mentions the exact time it publishes its stories… now I understand why ANR doesn’t 😂
Honestly, I understand how you guys feel. While this may seem humorous, it is a sad situation. Can you take them to court? But again, in Antigua, anything goes. I wouldn’t feel good either way. If someone takes my work and if I take their stuff. Maybe there’s no heart in it. But all I can say is Antigua.news is to continue to work hard. The fakes will fall off. Somehow
It takes hard work to maintain trusted sources and partners, fact-check and prepare articles. It is disheartening for your work to then be copied and pasted on a bigger site with no compensation to your diligent staff.
Lazy work from ANT,because of the world we live in there are no repocautions for these type of things
Stealing peoples work is and will never be fair
They see Antigua.news as a threat,or is it jealousy. Theft is theft no matter what situation if one is rightly situated to something and another takes and uses it.It is blatant theft
I think ANR is actually operating like more of a news aggregator than a regular news site. They don’t really write anything do they? They just pull all the important stories from different sites. If it is legal for them to operate like that they should definitely be giving attribution and stating their sources clearly. If they are using tons of content from a site and making a substantial profit, they should be paying the source site directly perhaps with a percentage of their profits. This site should consult a lawyer about this.
Again let us not miss the point. The government must and should ensure businesses like these are protected. I’m sure people take stuff from antiguanewsroom. It’s a take for take. Get with it. Gaston needs to put laws in place
How infantile this nation has become that “Gaston” must do this, fix, that, gimme this and ultimately ‘tek dat’. Journalists and journalism in Antigua,whether print or electronic, have been operating as quasi-independent workers(can’t quite bring myself to use the term ‘professionals’) kept in check only by lawsuits or fear/ threats of same. The population on the other hand has become well-primed for accepting everything we hear or read and this has served the field of journalism very well. The “journalists” in Antigua can solve their own problems unless they are more infantile than I thought. I don’t remember “Gaston”:having to call in entertainèrs to show them how to receive and benefit from copyright protocols. Speaking for myself personally, I am not dissatisfied with the content – quaity and quantity – news from this portal. In the complainants KNOW that they are being robbed, don’t come crying to the people. Do what needs to done to stop it! Until then, in the context of Antigua today, I commend this news portal for its interesting reading material. I will use commonsense to decide what to accept and what to reject.
Wow so basically there’s no professionalism anymore, i thought they were all working together? The law should start getting involved as well, otherwise it might have even more cases of plagerism, to the point there’s not many more ways to tell which is the original.
I’ve read this article and this is one of the reason I stopped reading news from ANR.
I saw a comment a while ago, talking about Antigua.news does the same thing, I’m pretty sure when you read Antigua.news reports they always have the source in which the news came from and the words are always in different form! ANR is plagiarizing and that’s a fact!!
Definitely reposting this.
ANR has always puzzled me with their writing and now I get why.