The ambiguity of the title of the Getty Museums new show, "Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties," hints at the underlying issues that photojournalism faces today. Who are these "engaged observers"? Are they the photographers making forays around the world to expose places unseen, both near and far? Or are they a captivated audience, willing to carefully study the images for their subtle indictments of global conflict?

The exhibition, which closes on November 14, instills in the viewer anxiety about what the legacy of documentary photographs will be in this new Photoshopped world, in which the public has been taught to fear the authenticity of an image, where the print media that once united audiences with a few, carefully chosen pictures is being replaced by the instantaneous turnover of massive amounts of publicly generated information online.

And yet, it seems that across the country, photography exhibitions and the use of photography in print and on the Web is teaching us one thing: the art world is absorbing and therefore protecting traditional photojournalism, while more studied photojournalism is embracing the art world in order to distinguish itself from the viral snapshot mass emailed from a cell phone. As people become unwilling to read thousands of words, and as they receive and absorb news with increasing quickness, the worth of pictures grows. Simultaneously, the medium is becoming even more democratic: today, photos can be made by almost everyone.

The artistic documentary images at the Getty are only a part of this larger trend, continuing the defensive elevation and acceptance of photojournalism by the art establishment. David Goldblatts chronicles of apartheid South Africa have recently been prominently displayed in shows at New York’s New Museum and Jewish Museum. The Flag Art Foundation has on display Magnum Photos trove of photographic works, promoting that agency’s history of mixing fine art and commissioned investigative documentation in one collection. Nina Bermans distressing depictions of a young, maimed Iraq vet in the weeks before his wedding were included in this year’s Whitney Biennial, allowing for one of the only moments of political gravitas in the show.

A William Carlos Williams quotation that the politically incendiary artist — and master of weaving the conceptually complex methods of the fine art world with the hard-hitting approach of photojournalism — Alfredo Jaar prominently presents on his Web site perhaps says it all: "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."