The normally sharp Howard Kurtz really missed the boat in his rundown of the recent Jon Stewart/Chris Wallace interview, and Politifact-ual aftermath. On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, he and his panel missed the mark on Stewart’s response to Politifact’s charge that his assertion about Fox News viewers was false, and when panelist Aaron Barnhart tried to bring up the crucial edit of an exchange about Fox exec Bill Sammon, Kurtz promised to go back to it, but never did.

Seems like Jon Stewart wasn’t content with his performance in debate against Fox News’ Bret Baier last week, in an interview in which he told the anchor he refused to accept Fox News as an objective news organization, to which the latter responded that the network “respected the viewers ability to discern” between opinion and hard news. Tonight, Stewart went after D.C. Managing Editor Bill Sammon for opinionated comments that he was certain proved the network’s bias.

Media Matters has released audio the group says it recorded of Bill Sammon, Fox News’ Washington managing editor, speaking on a Mediterranean cruise in 2009. On the tape, Sammon seems to suggest that he talked up the president’s possible belief in Socialism, while privately dismissing the idea as “far-fetched.”

Another in a series of potentially embarrassing internal memos authored by Fox News Managing Editor Bill Sammon has recently been leaked, and this one is a doozy. The memo, sent a week before Election Day 2008, reads like the oppo research “fact sheets” that the various presidential campaigns sent out to reporters during that election cycle, with a key difference. The source, in this case, was not a politician’s press office, but the Washington deputy managing editor of a major news network.

Perhaps it is no secret that Countdown host Keith Olbermann is not a fan of Fox News, but his blunt Twitter declaration that “Fox News is 100% bullshit” is worth noting, if for no other reason than that it is sure to draw some kind of response from its target. He was responding to a dissonant comparison of Fox News to liberal blog Daily Kos.

Apparently, Coundtdown fill-in host Chris Hayes didn’t get that memo, though, as he joined Rachel Maddow last week in crediting Shep Smith with helping to get the 9/11 First Responders bill passed.

The conventional wisdom from many TV pundits on the latest info dump from WikiLeaks was that, while they were potentially embarrassing, there was mostly nothing that people didn’t already know. The same can be said of “FoxLeaks,” the title given by Media Matters to a recent release of leaked internal memos from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to staffers. Last week’s published memo demonstrated how he directed coverage of the health care debate; today, leaked memo focused on the Global Warming debate. Get ready…he wanted it to reported with skepticism. Shocking!

From August of 2009 to March of 2010, the debate over health care reform was effectively story number one on cable news, in part because, it seemed a perfect metaphor for the new Obama administration. As expected, some saw it as an effort to assist the uninsured and powerless, others predictably saw it as government intervention run amok. A new memo from Fox News Managing Editor Bill Sammon leaked by Media Matters (and later reported by The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz confirms that the news staff was directed to cover the Health Care debate that some are certain to claim neither fair nor balanced.

Mediaite has obtained an email from Fox News Vice President of News and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to the staff of the D.C. bureau, in the wake of an FNC producer caught pumping up the crowd during the 9/12 tea party broadcast.

The email, with the subject line “standards,” addresses the controversy head-on: “We do not cheerlead for one cause or another,” writes Sammon. Full email after the jump: