Even if no taunting was involved, has anyone questioned the decision to kill the tiger as opposed to tranquilize it?

I doubt it, because it was "absolutely undeniably necessary."

Alerted by frantic calls from the zoo, four officers arrived in two police cars and tracked the tiger to the cafe. The tiger was sitting next to one victim but, when the officers arrived, it resumed its attack.

"The tiger jumped back on top," police Sgt. Steve Mannina said. "The victim had blood on his face."

The animal, distracted by the four officers and by the flashing red lights of the patrol cars, abandoned its victim and advanced toward the officers, Mannina said. The officers all fired their .40-caliber handguns, striking the tiger an unknown number of times.

According to this source, fatalities at amusement parks have averaged about four per year since 1987.  Considering the humongous numbers of people who ride on attractions at amusement parks, that's not a really astounding number.  Especially if you believe IAAPA's projection of 1.8 billion rides per year resulting in four deaths.  The 87 deaths ascribable to animal attacks at zoos between 1990 and 2000 works out to roughly 8 per year.  But then, did close to 20 billion people (11 years times 1.8 billion) even visit large predatory animal exhibits between 1990 and 2000.

I threw the question about whether zoos are good or bad for animals because I believe, if it is not the point, it's at least partially the point.  There are good zoos and then there are bad zoos, as I stated in my story.  Even the best zoos can't give enough room for elephants to thrive.  They need the expanse of something like this place.  But, even for smaller animals, sometimes locking them up in buildings can have tragic consequences (and that was at one of the better zoos in the world).  

I'm less taken by the argument that the only way you will be able to get people interested in animal preservation is by putting them on public display at a zoo.  Is that what impels most visits to the zoo?  Is it a serious learning experience about biological diversity or some mandatory school outing or an excuse to watch the monkeys cavort?  Do people generally come away from a visit to the zoo with a better understanding of the plight of the mountain gorilla or do they just think those chimps are the cutest darned animals and those birds in the bird house are, at once, the most colorful and noisy group of animals alive?  

Illegitimi non carborundum.

One of the reasons sensational stories like this do get so much coverage is because you're never supposed to go to the zoo and get eaten by the animals.  That's why zoos have cages and fences and moats and stuff like that.  Amusement park rides involve at least a semblance of willing risk on the part of riders.  We're talking about machines operated by human operators and machines go haywire and operators can always go asleep at the switch.  But, who goes to the zoo expecting the tiger to maul or eat you?

But, when things go really bad at amusement parks, don't they get about as much play in the media as this attack got?

When I first read reports of possible taunting, it was reported along the lines that one or all of the victims had taunted the tiger by foolishly running to get away from it.  The common wisdom is you stay absolutely still in the face of an approaching tiger.  Of course that common wisdom fails in light of a very common human response to a 300 pound predatory cat on the roam with her fangs exposed looking you over like something on the steam line at Old Cat Country Buffet.  I think, no I know, my first response would be to GTFO there.

There are already reports that at least one of the three kids was involved in taunting the tiger (probably the one who was killed).  There are reports that one victim scaled a wall and dangled his leg in front of the tiger and he might have placed a plank over the moat.  Yet, according to some, like SF Commissioner Michela Alioto-Pier, "it doesn't matter what those young men were or weren't doing" whatever happened was the fault of the San Francisco Zoo.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

I think it involves a wacky picture of a cat captioned:  I CAN HAZ GERRYBURGER?