CitizenCast · The Philadelphia Citizen

How we can break through media tribalism

March 13, 2026·56 min·5 clips

Media legend Michael Smerconish reveals how a hot dog restaurant with separate Fox and MSNBC rooms symbolizes America's political divide.

It starts with a complaint. The host grumbles that younger colleagues will trade Slack messages forever when a call, a meeting, or a drink would fix more. Then Michael Smirconish joins the table as a SiriusXM host, CNN anchor, commentator, and author making the case for a political center in America. The room stays loose at first. Before the media argument gets sharper, the conversation looks back to Mayor Reed, Thomas Friedman, and pension reform passed with a 15-0 vote. That thread matters because the episode keeps returning to a simple civic habit: things work better when people can still sit together, take criticism, and talk under pressure. Smirconish's best story comes from 2012. After endorsing Mitt Romney, he accepted a half-hour Oval Office interview with President Obama one week before the election. That should have been ordinary. Instead, a sales memo from his syndicator treated the booking as a problem because affiliates might not like him being courteous to the sitting president. The room laughs, then feels the sting. The story is really about a business afraid of its own political audience. Even 2012 starts to feel calmer by comparison. The panel remembers Romney and Obama as a serious race, including the first debate where Romney dominated. If that campaign now sounds normal, the slide into suspicion feels rougher. The ending relaxes again, with a joke about searching Smirconish and the Mingle Project, but the warning stays in the air.

As heard by us

A loose, anecdote-driven conversation that frames Michael Smirconish as a defender of the political center.

This episode opens with a familiar gripe about younger people leaning on Slack instead of picking up the phone, then settles into a conversation with Michael Smirconish about the media's role in a tense moment and his case for a political center.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a frank, slightly barbed take on why public debate feels broken, press play.

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