The San Francisco Zoo, which is co-owned by the City of San Francisco and the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society, has hired a high-powered communications strategist to help disseminate its perspective on the Christmas Day tiger attack that killed one zoo visitor and wounded two others.

Sam Singer, of Singer Associates, Inc. will be pitted in media warfare against Mark J. Geragos, the media-savvy attorney who has been retained by the two surviving victims of the tiger attack.

Singer, who describes himself as "one of the nation's leading corporate reputation and communications strategists," helped the President of Jack-in-the-Box Restaurants craft that company's response to a 1994-1995 food poisoining outbreak linked to contaminated beef.

"Anything that a defense attorney says has to be taken with not a pinch of salt, but a ton of salt," Singer was quoted as saying in the January 2, 2008 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.  Singer also said that he finds it "highly unusual that (Geragos) is the only person who has the facts, when the San Francisco Police Department hasn't even completed its investigation."

According to his website, Singers clients include the San Francisco 49ers, Levi Strauss & Co., ChevronTexaco Corp., Ford Motor Co., Mills Corp., and the Anschutz Investment Corp.

Singer says he has worked for the Richmond Independent and the Berkeley Daily Gazette, as well as the Berkeley Voice.

-- Dean Rotbart