While as media people we have on a number of occasions tried to help our colleagues by providing information and photographs to them but we simply cannot do the reporters' work for them all the time, after all they are being paid by their bosses to work and not to leach on other people.
The Editor in Chief of the Today Newspaper Hilbert Haar on a number of occasions has said that he does not believe in stealing other peoples work and whenever he uses our information he would make sure we are duly credited. However, the Today Newspaper has one reporter who does not seem to understand that he cannot sit behind his desk and steal information from us without being noticed. On several occasions we confronted Donellis Brown about the information we know he takes off of SMN News and rewrites without giving us credit and each time Mr. Brown would find an excuse to say he got his information elsewhere, what Mr. Brown does not know is that we at SMN News are able to point out when he visits our site and prints our information or even copies our information. The IP address registration on SMN News is not a gimmick, it actually works.
On Sunday evening, we uploaded an article regarding the letter that the Governor of St. Maarten sent to Parliament regarding the November 17th meeting. While we quoted the letter we did not publish the letter when the article was posted because we know that Donellis Brown and our colleagues at the Daily Herald will take it and use it as their own. After all, when it is published it is for public consumption. So we at SMN News decided that we will hold the letter until later in the night. That however, prompted Donellis Brown to call us and to ask for the letter. SMN News reporter informed Brown that it is because we are being plagiarized by him and the Daily Herald that we decided to hold the letter back. Brown then told us that he will give us credit if we publish the letter early. What Donellis Brown did not realize is that he was being taped when he said that he will use our letter and information and give us credit. Surprisingly, Brown used the letter we published and our information and as usual refused to credit us. When our lawyer contacted Brown on Monday his excuse was that he inadvertently forgot to mention that he took the letter from SMN News and he will correct that on Tuesday. Well, Mr. Brown wants to be a lawyer, as a matter of fact, he is traveling on Tuesday to the Netherlands to enroll and sit a placement examination for the school he intends to attend now that he has his Dutch citizenship. Mr. Brown, we all know that lawyers are good liars, in most cases they are not caught with their pants down, but you were, and we can now say that you are not a man of your word.