A longtime conservative columnist, Victor Lasky got his start in journalism in 1940 as a copy boy for The New York Journal-American. During the Second World War, Lasky worked as a correspondent for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes covering the war in Europe. After the war, he joined the staff of The New York World-Telegram, where he assisted Frederick Woltman with his Pulitzer Prize-winning articles on Communist infiltration and co-wrote a book on Alger Hiss's trial with Ralph de Toledano.
During the 1950s Lasky worked as a screenwriter, and from 1956 to 1960 he was in charge of public relations for Radio Liberty. In 1962 he began writing a syndicated newspaper column, ''Say It Straight,'' for the North American Newspaper Alliance, which ran for the next two decades, as well as a series of controversial books about contemporary politicians.