A Note on Garrett McQueen

MPR President Duchesne Drew and APM President Dave Kansas address the departure of Garrett McQueen.

Yesterday, American Public Media parted ways with Garrett McQueen.

Our organization’s values guide our decisions, and one of those values calls on us to hold one another accountable for our actions. While we typically do not discuss the details of employee departures, the experience we’ve seen described publicly does not accurately describe what has occurred.

Our decision was not sudden and came after several conversations with Garrett over the past year regarding programming changes. The warnings presented to Garrett were not tied to his choice of music or the reasons for his unauthorized changes to playlists. He was able to make changes to the playlist, but the manner in which he made changes is what caused an issue. We have a process in place for changing playlists, and that process exists to maintain our more than 200 partner stations’ compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and to ensure royalties are properly paid for the music played.

We value Garrett’s work and his distinctive contributions to our shared commitment to increase diversity and inclusion in classical music. And we remain steadfast in pursuing that commitment. Across Classical MPR, 24 percent of the music we play features a composer, conductor or soloist who is a woman and/or a Black person, Indigenous person, or Person of Color. We are committed to increasing this number.

We know that there is still more work needed to further expand our catalog and increase representation in our programming. We are committed to doing this work.  

Duchesne Drew                Dave Kansas
President MPR                  President APM