Elmer Davis & The News; September 16 1939 Tonight Or Tomorrow Morning xvid

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• published: 13 Oct 2014
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Elmer Davis (January 13, 1890 – May 18, 1958) was a well-known news reporter, author, the Director of the United States Office of War Information during World War II and a Peabody Award recipient. Davis was born in Aurora, Indiana, the son of a cashier for the First National Bank of Aurora. One of Davis' first professional writing jobs was with the Indianapolis Star, a position he held while attending Franklin College. A brilliant student, Davis received a Rhodes Scholarship to Queen's College, Oxford in 1910. His stay in England was cut short when his father became ill and eventually died. Davis met his wife, Florence, in England. Upon his return to America, Davis became an editor for the pulp magazine Adventure, leaving after a year to work as a reporter and editorial writer for The New York Times. For the next decade, Davis reported on stories ranging from pugilist Jack Dempsey to evangelist Billy Sunday. It was his coverage of Billy Sunday that gained him notoriety. Davis later left The New York Times and became a freelance writer. Davis' best-known work is the company history History of the New York Times. 1851–1921 (New York: The New York Times, 1921). In 1928, Davis published his novel Giant Killer, a retelling of the story of David. In August 1939, Paul White, the news chief at CBS, asked Davis to fill in as a news analyst for H. V. Kaltenborn, who was off in Europe reporting on the increasingly hostile events. Davis became an instant success. Edward R. Murrow later commented that one reason he believed that Davis was likeable was his Hoosier accent, which reminded people of a friendly neighbor. By 1941, the audience for Davis' nightly five-minute newscast and comment was 12.5 million. Davis spent two and a half years reporting the news on radio and gaining the trust of the nation. Then, in 1941, his colleagues persuaded President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to appoint Davis director of the newly created United States Office of War Information, a sprawling organization with over 3,000 employees. Even though Davis was being paid $53,000 per year from CBS, he left the network to work in government during the crisis of World War II. As Director of the Office of War Information, Davis recommended to President Roosevelt that Japanese-Americans be permitted to enlist for service in the Army and Navy and urged him to oppose bills in Congress that would deprive Nisei of citizenship and intern them during the war. He argued that Japanese propaganda proclaiming it a racial war could be combated by deeds that counteracted this. Davis has been termed one of the "unsung forefathers" of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Nisei combat unit in the war. Davis was also instrumental in loosening censorship rules that forbid the publication of images of dead GIs on the battlefield. Until late 1943, the U.S. Office of Censorship only permitted the media to publish images of blanket-covered bodies and flag-draped coffins of dead U.S. soldiers, partly for fear that Americans would be demoralized if they had any graphic understanding of the human price being paid in the war. The government also restricted what reporters could write, and coverage was generally upbeat and bloodless. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------