Has the house of mouse grounded Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus?

The Associated Press reports that Cyrus will skip a media event Friday to coincide with the end of taping of the Disney Channel Games.

The event would be Cyrus’ first scheduled public appearance since the scandal erupted over pictures the 15-year-old took with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz for the June issue of Vanity Fair.

The photo in question shows a bare-backed and shouldered Cyrus wrapped in a silky swath of fabric suggesting a bed sheet, though flaks for Vanity Fair say it was actually a shawl. The photo has sparked furious debate over whether the picture is too sexually suggestive for a 15-year-old girl, let alone Disney’s most lucrative starlet and the current “It Girl” of the tween set.

Cyrus has been scheduled to appear at this red carpet media event at Walt Disney World in Orlando for weeks. Disney officials will only say she is no longer expected to attend. Cyrus did join other Disney Channel celebrities during the three-day taping of the Disney Channel Games. Two of those days were open to the public though there was no opportunity for Cyrus to interact with anyone outside the production lines. She is also scheduled to appear at a concert Saturday along with the Jonas Brothers at Walt Disney World. Tickets to that event were handed out by Disney and not readily available to the public.

For her part, Cyrus did issue a statement through a publicist to say that she was embarrassed by the photos. Disney, which ironically enough used Annie Lebovitz as the photographer in a provocative recent campaign showing big-name celebrities portraying favorite Disney characters, blasted Vanity Fair saying the magazine manipulated Cyrus to sell copies. Vanity Fair and Lebovitz stand by the photo spread though, saying they thought the pictures were natural and furthermore totally approved by Cyrus family members and handlers at the time of the shoot.

For now, it appears Disney’s strategy is to have Miley Cyrus lay low until this whole thing blows over, if that is possible. Better to try and save the insanely successful franchise than dump her to prove a point to kids and parents who had already seen far too much well before a series of questionable photos of Cyrus hit the Internet.

By the way, the Disney Channel Games will air in late July as a five-part series on the Disney Channel.