We Write It; They Copy It | Rampant Theft & Plagiarism by AntiguaNewsRoom

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.