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.

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.

[3] The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized.Davis spent two and a half years reporting the news on radio and gaining the trust of the nation.

Then, in 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Davis as the director of the newly created United States Office of War Information, a sprawling organization with over 3,000 employees.

[4]: 59  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.

[6] Davis was also instrumental in loosening censorship rules that forbade 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,[7] partly for fear that Americans would be demoralized if they had any graphic understanding of the human price being paid in the war.

He asked President Roosevelt to lift the ban on publishing photographs of dead GIs on the battlefield on the grounds that the American people needed to appreciate the sacrifices made by their young men.

He was a longstanding member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the literary society dedicated to keeping green the memory of Sherlock Holmes.