Trouble at the zoo: Copenhagen Zoo and the Marius giraffe crisis
The CEO of Copenhagen Zoo managed to change public opinion about
its decision to euthanise a baby giraffe, in Denmark at least.
When Copenhagen Zoo put down a healthy two-year-old giraffe and
dissected it in front of a group of visiting school children, it
made a splash across international news media. And not in a good
way.  Prior to the execution of Marius, animal rights groups had
protested to prevent it, but the protest had been relatively
contained until the press caught wind of the event.  One
particularly brutal headline in a prestigious Danish newspaper
read "Zoo keeper: ‘Then I took my gun and shot Marius through
the brain’". And soon after, the international media had been
whipped into a frenzy.  Scientific director Bengt Holst managed
to handle the press in a way that went some way towards
salvaging the situation, however.  He was given the difficult
task of explaining to both the national and international press
why the zoo had cho