You know how sometimes when a dictator comes to power, the previous leader of the nation is “disappeared” from sight, not just physically but even airbrushed from photos? Not only can people be scrubbed from history but so can truth.

If you look at the front page of the Huffington Post right now, you’ll see a headline that reads:”The View Makes Extremely Controversial Choice,” which refers you to a story by Katherine Fung about Jenny McCarthy being hired as a new talking head for Barbara Walters’ show. The brief piece contains the following sentence:

“McCarthy has guest hosted the show eight times. Her appointment, though, is not without criticism about her controversial views on vaccinations and autism.”

What the story unfortunately doesn’t mention is that the Huffington Post played a large role in McCarthy having a platform to disseminate her fearmongering. In fact, there was a time when McCarthy was all but the de facto medical writer for the site, using bad science and no science to repeatedly frighten parents from immunizing their children. When the main research she was using for her theories was proved to be falsified bunk, the Huffington Post even allowed McCarthy a rationalization of an exit story which she didn’t deserve.

I’m not accusing Fung of purposely omitting this vital fact. She’s probably a very young person who hasn’t been working for the Huffington Post for long and likely has no idea about the link. But there must be management people who have institutional memory and should not allow the publication a divorce of convenience from the facts. Similarly, the second link, which takes you to a story at Salon about McCarthy’s past, doesn’t mention the HuffPo role in the debacle. I’m not saying Salon purposely elided the connection because of what seems to be a working relationship between the two sites, but it is reason to pause. (Scroll down to the bottom of that very Salon page and you’ll see all manner of Huffington Post editorial links.) Salon did at one time call out the Huffington Post on such things.

I’m not someone who hates Arianna Huffington. I think she’s basically a good person. But she and her management team made a terrible mistake in allowing McCarthy to publish her pseudo-science and the Huffington Post shouldn’t “forget” its role in that sad campaign.•