Tuesday, 4 December 2007


Media guardian:


Heat pays out in Jordan row
Chris Tryhorn and Stephen Brook
Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday December 4 2007
Katie Price - aka Jordan - has withdrawn her complaint about a Heat sticker mocking her disabled son Harvey after the magazine apologised in today's edition and made a donation to charity.
The Press Complaints Commission has now dropped a formal investigation into the sticker, which showed Harvey's face and was captioned "Harvey wants to eat me".
Today Heat published an apology headed "Harvey - sorry" on its letters page, admitting it had made a "mistake" by printing the sticker of Harvey, who is blind and has a hormone problem that causes weight gain.
"It was never our intention to cause offence to Harvey's family and friends nor to you, our readers," the apology said. "In particular, it was never our aim to make fun of Harvey's disabilities.
"We now accept that the decision to include this sticker was a mistake and we recognise that it has caused offence, not only to Katie and Peter Andre, but to a number of readers.
"Immediately following publication, we apologised unreservedly to Katie and Peter. We wish to apologise publicly to Harvey, Katie and Peter for any embarrassment and distress caused.
"Heat has voluntarily decided to make a donation to The Vision Charity, an organsiation that Katie and her family have worked with over a number of years, as a mark of its regret."
Last week Price and her husband, Peter Andre, lodged a complaint about the sticker, one of 50 given away by the Emap-owned magazine.
They cited clauses 6 and 12 of the PCC's code of practice, which deal with the protection of children and discrimination.
I think this is so wrong of Heat to do. Its expected from a trashy magazine like that anyway, but this has gone too far because i think its so rude. No one would want someone cussing their child, especially if they had a disability. It is expected for magazines like this to pick on celebrities because that is what happens if youre a celeb, but not an innocent child. And i think Katie should not have withdrawn the complaint, she should have sewed them so they would have been even more publicly humiluated and their reputation would have gone down the drain, which is what they deserve after this.

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