"How you see something," said Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al Jazeera International, "depends very much on where you're sitting."

Those words could well serve as the manifesto for the channel, the English-language offspring of the polarizing pan-Arab network, which will make its debut in more than 40 million households in late May.

That's the lead on next Sunday's cover story in the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times. The piece, titled "Translation: Is the Whole World Watching?" and subtitled "Al-Jazeera Makes a Billion-Dollar Bet, in English," was released yesterday. But the piece is already out of date, since the network's launch has been delayed, again.

"Al Jazeera made that Thursday announcement about their major delay knowing they had an enormous story coming out in the NYT on Sunday. They obviously planned it so they could pull the wool over the eyes of the Times and keep their cover story," an e-mailer asserts...