Oh, the tangled webs that can be woven as media vies for attention.

On June 8, morning radio talkshow host Jon Justice got the kind of publicity that is hard to buy. An editorial in the Arizona Daily Star urged people to put pressure on the Truth KQTH 104.1-FM radio station because he spreads "hateful lies" and "unrelenting and erroneous attacks against Latino immigrants."

The editorial, headlined "Hispanic group right to stand up to hatemongers," used as its starting point a boycott of personality Lou Dobbs launched by the national Hispanic Institute.

"Simlarly, we believe local groups could put pressure on Tucson radio station 104.1-FM, which airs ‘The Jon Justice Show,’ a morning program that repeats many of the claims made by Lou Dobbs and other anti-immigration media personalities," the Star said in its editorial.

That got things stirred up. Within 24 hours there were 347 comments posted to the Star’s website and without keeping exact numbers, it’s safe to say they overwhelmingly rejected the editorial’s premise.

It also played right into Justice’s hands. As a host who has only been on the air in Tucson for about 10 months, Justice is hungry to get listeners and build ratings.

He grabbed hold of the opportunity like a dog with a rag and didn’t want to let up. But for as much as he talked about it on his radio program, he couldn’t talk about it in an interview with me. The owners of the Truth, Journal Broadcasting, have a policy prohibiting media interviews.

(Some irony there. A media company prohibiting interviews with the media. Does that mean they can’t talk among themselves? But I digress.)

On his show, Justice said Ann Brown, the Star’s editorial page editor, declined to go on the air with him because, according to an e-mail, she said the newspaper had said everything it wanted to say in the editorial.

To make this convoluted thing even more so, Brown did call me back, confirming what she said in the e-mail, and seemed willing to talk "except I’m not really a good one to ask because I haven’t paid much attention to what he is saying."

She did say, however, that it is not correct to say the newspaper was calling for a boycott of Justice’s show. "If you read the editorial it said we believe local groups could put pressure on Tucson radio station 104.1-FM."

The problem with that, though, is talkradio thrives on controversy. Some of the most successful personalities spur it on and relish it. It’s part of the format. That is probably the case with the Truth, which also carries the shows of national personalities including Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham. Not only that, on its website the station proclaims in big bold letters it’s "FEARLESS - HONEST - RIGHT."

The station even used the Star’s editorial as an opportunity to post a poll on its website saying, "The editorial board at the Arizona Daily Star thinks you should boycott Jon Justice and 104.1 The Truth. Will you heed their advice?" Two days into the online poll, 131 of 132 respondents voted "No way! Who still reads the Star anyway?" The other choice for an answer was "Of course! The Star knows best."

Radio rallies to cause

The best radio is local radio. Here’s an example: The tragic story of the June 1 fatal shooting of Tucson Police Officer Erik Hite rallied the audiences of JohnJay Van Es and Rich Berra on KRQ 93.7-FM and Jon Justice on the Truth.

For three weeks, Johnjay and Rich had been running a contest as part of their recurring feature "Who Do You Know?" in which listeners are asked to get celebrities to call in to the show. The winning prize was a new Volkswagen Rabbit.

Those who listen know they get some well-known names calling. This time, for instance, they got Stephen Baldwin, Josh Duhamel, Deborah Gibson, Bret Michaels and Joe Elliott. Calls from Charles Barkley and presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain won the prize because both called in on behalf of the Hite family.

KRQ has posted podcasts of the calls online at www.johnjayandrich.com.

Meanwhile, Justice on the Truth hosted nearly 300 local law enforcement personnel June 5 at a new Einstein Bros. Bagels, 1601 N. Oracle Road in College Place, as a fundraiser for the Hites. They raised over $3,000.

Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237. Inside Tucson Media appears weekly.