Photo Caption Should Have Been Better. But \'Orwellian\'? No.

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times Girls at a Gaza school were stunned to find it closed. An emboldened Hamas may lead Israel to harden its stance.

The image is moving and emotional. As great photography does, it takes readers someplace, puts us at the scene.

In this case, the destination is Gaza City, where seven schoolgirls â€" clad in their backpacks and blue-striped uniforms with white-eyelet collars â€" have arrived at school only to find that it has been severely damaged by Israeli bombs and therefore closed. They look shocked â€" one girl's hand covers her mouth, another has her hand at her throat .

The photographer Tyler Hicks shot the picture on Saturday, and it appeared at the top of the front page of Sunday's New York Times. Like much of Mr. Hicks's photography, it is evocative, capturing circumstances memorably.

By Sunday afternoon, I had heard from a number of readers and media writers who were critical of the caption, which under a headline that read “Prospects Worsen for Mideast Peace Talks,” said “Girls at a Gaza school were stunned to find it closed. An emboldened Hamas may lead Israel to harden its stance. Page 12.”

Greg Mitchell, a media blogger for The Nation, went so far as to call the caption “Disgraceful, some might say Orwellian.”

“Why closed? You had to go to other photos way over at the NYT site to find out that the school was completely destroyed by an Israeli air strike. The caption might even suggest to some that Hamas had shut down a lightly damaged school. While pro minent placement of the photo might draw criticism from Israelis, the caption seemed aimed at softening that.”

The caption certainly could have been better. But after gathering information from the photographer and an assistant foreign editor, looking at the photographer's original description of the photograph, looking at other photographs from the same shoot and thinking about the caption's multiple purpose, I think that criticism is overstated.

Douglas Schorzman, an assistant foreign editor, told me that it wasn't clear to editors in New York how damaged the building was. “If it was leveled, we just should have said so,” he said. But “on deadline and in the moment, we may not have known that.” And in fact, it wasn't leveled, so it made sense to be cautious.

I exchanged e-mail messages with Mr. Hicks, who wrote that the school was not “completely destroyed.”

“The building was still standing but not safe or in any con dition to be occupied by students,” he said. His original written description, provided to editors on Saturday, said only that the school was damaged.

In addition, the brief caption was serving a second purpose â€" as a way to direct readers to an inside page where several articles were displayed, including one about the prospects for peace talks and the role of Hamas.

Meanwhile, some readers, including Jonathan Blank, saw a different problem with the photograph. They thought that choosing it for the front page showed anti-Israeli bias:

So once again, the Times has opted to editorialize against Israel and in favor of Hamas. I know many people and organizations have long told the Times of its anti-Israel stance, but nothing depicts this better than today's selection of Gazan girls over (Hamas leader Khaled) Meshaal's declaration of war. Perhaps you, as an independent Times insider, can explain to the public why the Times would side with Hamas - an inference that the picture of innocent Gazan girls certainly conveys - over Hamas' reiteration of its intention to destroy Israel.

I have two conclusions: 1.) The Times's coverage of this conflict cannot begin to be judged by the choice of one photo on one day. It has to be put in context over time. (I haven't done that kind of long-term study, though I am paying careful attention to the coverage.) I reject the idea that the choice of this photo indicates an anti-Israeli bias.

2.) The caption could have been clearer and more informative â€" even in a short space, and even with its multiple purpose in mind. It could have briefly described the damage to the school and how it happened. It could have avoided the confusing juxtaposition of the sentence about the school and the one about “emboldened Hamas.” But it was not disgraceful and it was not Orwellian.