`For Olive Council, ‘Positive Journalism’ Hard to Come By - Olive Oil Times
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For Olive Council, ‘Positive Journalism’ Hard to Come By

By Curtis Cord
Oct. 24, 2012 12:59 UTC
International Olive Council Executive Director Jean-Louis Barjol

In an effort to ​“pro­mote pos­i­tive writ­ing by jour­nal­ists about the olive indus­try,” the International Olive Council announced last March it would award €5,000 to the best arti­cle pub­lished online or in print ​“pro­mot­ing the desire to dis­cover and enjoy olive oil and table olives.”

But in a turn, the IOC has can­celed the con­test because it has not received enough entries.

In a let­ter to jour­nal­ists who sub­mit­ted their work to the Madrid-based inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion by the October 1 dead­line, IOC Executive Director Jean-Louis Barjol wrote that there were not enough entries for the Council to deter­mine a win­ner. It was unclear how many entries the IOC received.

The con­test rules posted on the IOC web­site, did not indi­cate a min­i­mum num­ber of entries nec­es­sary for the judg­ing to go for­ward.

“We widely announced the com­pe­ti­tion by post­ing it on our web­site and inform­ing press asso­ci­a­tions in the coun­tries con­cerned, as well as the IOC Heads of Delegation and many other con­tacts,” Barjol wrote. ​“Unfortunately, we are very sorry to say that we have not received enough entries for the com­pe­ti­tion to go ahead.” Olive Oil Times obtained a copy of the email from a jour­nal­ist who asked not to be iden­ti­fied.

The IOC is charged by the United Nations to estab­lish rules for the global olive oil indus­try, so it was sur­pris­ing to some that it acted to can­cel the con­test when such a pos­si­bil­ity was not indi­cated any­where in its own com­pe­ti­tion rules.

No stranger to con­tests, the Council also directs the Mario Solinas olive oil com­pe­ti­tion, con­sid­ered among the most strin­gent EVOO con­tests in the world, although it, too, has had dif­fi­culty attract­ing par­tic­i­pants, with just two of this year’s 111 entries com­ing from Italy.

At press time, Barjol had not returned an email seek­ing fur­ther com­ments about the can­cel­la­tion of the jour­nal­ism con­test.

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