Read The Alpha Mummy blog

Heat magazine today published an apology to Katie Price, the glamour model better known as Jordan, and its readers a week after it published a controversial image of her young disabled son Harvey.

The celebrity weekly said it would make an unspecified donation to The Vision Charity, a charity for blind and visually impaired children that Ms Price has worked with, in addition to publishing a short statement on the letter's page in this week's issue.

Those actions appear to have satisfied Ms Price, who, through her lawyers, has told the Press Complaints Commission that she does not want to take the matter further. The PCC can only continue the investigation with her support, so as far as the watchdog is concerned the matter is now resolved.

Heat said that it was "never our intention to cause offence to Harvey's family and friends nor to you, our readers" and said it would like to "apologise publicly" to Harvey, his mother and her husband Peter Andre. Senior executives at Emap, the publisher of Heat, have been stung by the criticism, although it is not clear if any action has been taken against the title's editor Mark Frith.

The glossy had produced a sticker of the five year old, with the phrase “Harvey wants to eat me!” — unleashing a series of complaints from readers. Over a hundred people complained directly to the PCC, and a day after the initial publication, Katie Price's agent contacted the PCC to indicate that she would be making a formal complaint.

Harvey Price suffers from septo-optic dysplasia, a rare condition which means he is visually impaired and suffers from hormonal deficiencies. The portrayal of the child had also been attacked by disability rights groups -- but was first picked up in a posting on Times Online's Alpha Mummy blog that rapidly attracted reader attention.

Heat magazine’s non-stop diet of celebrity news, gossip and pictures, has made it one of the publication success stories of the last decade. This week’s cover story, headlined "Jen's secret e-mails to Brad," referring to emails send by an apparently unhappy Jennifer Aniston to her ex-husband Brad Pitt.

The title is bought by over 550,000 people each week and read by many more. It is owned by Emap, Britain’s second biggest magazine publisher, which is currently up for sale in an attempt to lift its flagging share price.

Times recommends

• The Boxing Day tsunami: five years on
• What took place in 2010...
• Can you really cure a hangover?