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Who Owns Our Stories?

Apr 29, 2024 | Family, Grief

Who Owns Our Stories?

The Fever Pitch and the Harm of True Crime

 

By Nora Biette-Timmons

 There doesn’t appear to be one singular moment when America went true-crime crazy. In the 1990s and early 2000s, tabloids and popular magazines published what they considered salacious details of violent crimes that captured their readers’ imagination. NBC’s Dateline premiered in 1992, and has spent the last three decades reporting out crimes week after week, and remains a major success: In 2023, 125 million people watched Dateline, and it was the number one most popular TV newsmagazine program, according to Nielsen data.

The podcast boom of the last decade can in part be attributed to Americans’ existing obsession with true crime: The This American Life spinoff Serial’s first season investigated the 1999 murder of Hae-min Lee and the subsequent prosecution of her former boyfriend Adnan Syed. Its explosive popularity—it was downloaded 100 million times within a year of its release—brought renewed attention to the case, and in 2022, Syed’s murder conviction was thrown out. However, it was later reinstated in October 2023—because Lee’s brother had been unable to attend the hearing at which it was overturned.

This oversight is indicative of a larger reality. When true crime stories garner the sort of frantic, fever-pitch level of attention of Serial, the lived experiences of those actually hurt by the crime go under the radar—if they’re not outright ignored.

As Lee’s brother told a court in 2022, “This is not a podcast for me. It’s real life that will never end — it’s been 20-plus years. It’s a nightmare.”

The commercial success of true crime means that for far too many people, the worst thing that’s ever happened to them has been turned into entertainment, regardless of whether or not they and their loved ones have received justice of any sort.

For Laura Freeman, that moment came in late June 2022, when a popular TV network aired an episode focused on the case of her mother, Virginia, who had been murdered in College Station, Texas, more than 40 years previously, when Freeman was 14 and her brother, Brad, was 12. Virginia was a realtor, and volunteered at church helping immigrants whose spouses moved to town to attend Texas A&M. Laura Freeman remembers the camping trips her mother would plan; Virginia helped build a very happy, stable family.

It had taken investigators 38 years to determine who violently killed her mother. A former sheriff’s detective who worked the case appeared as an expert on the episode, telling intimate, gruesome details about the case. 

A friend of her cousin told them about the show, warning Freeman’s family against watching it. Freeman told Evermore that she only watched a preview of the episode—and saw a picture of her mom’s hand wearing a ring that she now has.

“I felt frozen when I first viewed the picture of my mother’s hand,” she said.

Maintaining the dignity of victims’ stories, even without consent, is possible. An ABC News report on the discovery that led to solving Freeman’s mother’s murder exemplifies how to report crime victims’ stories responsibly. It doesn’t include unnecessary salacious details, for example, in the same fashion that many true crime platforms do, or tease the idea that Freeman’s father may have done it, a common trope in true crime storytelling.  

The ABC report also recognizes that this crime had lasting effects on her loved ones, and clearly sought to include their perspective: “While it’s too painful for her children to talk about the case, her son said earlier this year that he’s grateful investigators never lost interest in his mother’s case,” the last paragraph reads.

In an interview with TIME Magazine, Mindy Pendleton said she also felt re-traumatized when she found out that another popular network documentary team was reporting on the murder of her stepson, Robert Mast. In February 2019, they asked her and her family to participate in the show. Pendleton was vehemently opposed to the idea.

“As a parent, a fellow human being, I beg you not to do this,” she wrote in an email to the documentary team, which she shared with TIME. “PLEASE don’t do this!”

Though a producer told Pendleton he’d never faced such a “moral dilemma,” the show moved forward despite her pleas, and Mast’s murder was recounted in the first episode of the second season of I Am A Killer, which premiered in April 2020. While the episode did not include input from Mast’s family, it did paint the woman who killed him “in a relatively sympathetic light,” as TIME reporter Melissa Chan put it.

I Am A Killer has gone on to have two more seasons, and a fifth is coming later this year—proving that the true crime craze has not dissipated.

Besides its exploitative focus on peoples’ most harrowing memories, true crime consumption often comes with another downside, according to Stacey Nye, a clinical professor of psychology at UW-Milwaukee: victim blaming.

Even those who “do everything right” can become victimized, Nye said in an interview with WUWM, an NPR station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She also highlighted another problem with true crime: its over-emphasis on white women: “There’s a huge number of women of color, Indigenous women, and trans women who are targeted, and that’s talked about much less.”

No victim deserves to have their story told without their permission—or that of their loved ones. But, like any other media representation, it’s important to be aware of the inequalities that true crime narratives may perpetuate.

It may be hard to determine a comprehensive solution to the exploitative side of true crime, given just how massive the industry is now.

But at least on an individual level, true crime content producers can make amends with victims and/or their families.

The National Center for Victims of Crime has sought to create more understanding among true crime fans, too.

“We have focused on trying to encourage ‘ethical’ true crime consumption—meaning that viewers are mindful of what they are watching and hold the producers/creators accountable for being victim-centered and including victim voices,” Renee Williams, the center’s executive director, told Evermore. “We always advocate for the inclusion of victims in telling their own stories in true crime and media coverage.”

To that end, her organization has created guidelines to help people stay thoughtful as they watch true crime shows or listen to true crime podcasts. Among them are reminders for people to ensure they’re consuming content from legitimate sources and to prioritize content that elevates victims’ perspectives.

So, the next time you scroll through your phone to pick a podcast, or see promo for the latest murder documentary splashed across your TV, take a beat. Remember that, no matter how this content may be packaged—whether it has Hollywood high production values, or uses a crime story to illustrate a salient political point—it is telling a story that belongs to someone else. Real people’s pain is behind these narratives, and it is important to remember and center that.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator border_width=”3″ css_animation=”fadeInRight” css=””][vc_column_text css=””]

We welcome readers to share their experiences with true crime — positive or negative, confusing, frustrating, or supportive. If you have a story to share, email us at hello@stagingevermore.dbdodev.com.

 

5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Funeral Industry

Apr 17, 2024 | Advocacy, Federal Government

When someone close to us dies, we’re hardly in the right frame of mind to handle logistics and practical matters. Yet, often, this is the first thing we’re forced to confront.

There’s the matter of the deceased’s body and how it will be handled, but also funeral arrangements and ceremonial planning to honor the life of the person we’re grieving.

Funeral planning requires people to make multiple decisions while experiencing difficult and intense emotions. Making matters even more challenging, funeral arrangements are financially taxing.

In America, the funeral industry is essentially unavoidable after someone close to us dies. Because the funeral industry is ubiquitous and homogenous — offering the same services, same processes and procedures for after-death care — we rarely question it. But there’s a lot about the funeral industry you may not know.

 

Here are five facts about the funeral industry that will probably surprise you:

1. The funeral industry pulls in big dollars.

In the U.S., funeral homes are a $20 billion dollar annual industry. Most funeral homes are privately owned, and increasingly, more funeral homes are owned by large corporations.

Service Corporation International, the largest death-care corporation in the country, owns and operates more than 1,400 locations in North America and brought in more than $4 billion in revenue in 2023.

“Families are hurting. They are not only losing someone meaningful in their lives, their losses are compounded by the soaring costs in burials and cremations,” says Evermore founder Joyal Mulheron. “The funeral industry is well-funded, made only more profitable by our nation’s concurrent mortality epidemics — just look at their revenue statements.”

According to Statista, there are nearly 19,000 funeral homes in the U.S., yet there remains a surprising lack of competition in the industry. In the past several decades, larger funeral service companies, and in some cases, private equity firms, have bought up smaller, family-run businesses that were well-known and trusted in their communities.

The result has been a growing monopoly on the industry by fewer wealthy — and powerful — businesses. The industry’s consolidation was the central storyline for the 2023 hit The Burial, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx and directed by Maggie Betts.

 

2. The funeral industry is poorly regulated.

The funeral industry is primarily regulated by the Funeral Rule. Introduced in 1984 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Funeral Rule was established to prevent vulnerable families from being exploited by licensed funeral homes after the FTC found widespread deceptive practices that limited consumers’ ability to make informed decisions. Today, if funeral homes violate the Rule, they may be subject to penalties of more than $51,000 per violation.

While this seems like a strong deterrent, the FTC granted the funeral industry a “sweetheart deal” more than 25 years, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). When funeral homes are found to be in violation of the Funeral Rule, they can opt to participate in the Funeral Rule Offenders Program (FROP), a training program run by the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), which is the industry’s largest trade association and lobbying group. The offending funeral homes who enroll in the program become members of the association.

Essentially, the organization that lobbies lawmakers for fewer industry regulations is the same entity responsible for “policing” and penalizing offending businesses. NFDA conceals violations from American consumers and according to some experts, “it’s essentially a hush-money business.” However, the WSJ secured a list of 538 funeral homes that violated the Funeral Rule and publicly reported them earlier this year.

 

3. With no price transparency requirements for the funeral industry, consumers are highly vulnerable to overpaying.

In October 2022, the FTC revealed that more than 60 percent of funeral homes have little to no pricing information on their websites. This leaves consumers in a particularly vulnerable position.

“Imagine losing your child and then having to negotiate where their body goes and how much you’ll pay for it, all within hours,” says Mulheron. “When our own daughter was terminally ill, I called several funeral homes in hopes of identifying one where she could be taken once she died. Several told me they would ‘cut me a deal’ if she died soon. One facility, more than an hour away from our home, said, ‘We charge our flat rate for children of $400.’ We need more people like this leading the industry, not private equity brokers.”

Funeral costs for a single death event are significant, especially for families who struggle to cover the ongoing costs of housing, food, and medical care. According to a 2023 NFDA survey, the average cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial is nearly $8,300. A funeral with cremation costs only about $2,000 less.

These costs don’t take into account the costs of the cemetery, monument, marker, or other miscellaneous expenses, such as flowers. According to the Funeral Alliance Association, these added expenses often increase the total cost of full funeral services by $2,000 or $3,000.

 

4. Plan your funeral, but don’t prepay!

Following the WSJ’s release of the 538 funeral homes that violated federal law, a second WSJ article featured several stories of individuals who tried to act responsibly by paying for their own funerals in advance of dying. In some cases, their families ended up paying twice or more than the initial contracted amount. Whether it is lost paperwork, industry consolidation, “the fine print,” or something else entirely, it’s best to plan for the funeral but not pre-pay, then share your desires widely with family and friends.

 

5. Rather than regulate, your hard-working tax dollars are being used to reimburse funeral expenses.

In 2020, Congress passed a bill reimbursing some families for funeral expenses and only if they lost a loved one to COVID-19 (i.e., if your loved one died from overdose, homicide, or suicide, for example, you do not qualify for reimbursement). As of today, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA), responsible for managing taxpayer reimbursement dollars for funeral expenses, has distributed $2.8 billion to 438,000 approved applications, with an average award of $6,400.

Fortunately, the federal government is beginning to act. The FTC has initiated a regulatory process indicating it will reissue the Funeral Rule. Evermore submitted comments to the FTC and is continuing to follow along. However, this process can take years and there is no indication on when the FTC might act. There is reason to believe that the industry will sue the FTC when it does act, further delaying price transparency.

 

It’s time for the funeral industry to join the digital age by sharing prices online. If we, as a nation, focus on closing down children’s lemonade stands for operating without permits, we can easily protect consumers from the funeral industry’s bad actors. After all, as Benjamin Franklin said, “nothing is certain except death and taxes.”

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We welcome readers to share their experiences working with funeral homes — positive or negative, confusing, frustrating, or supportive. If you have a story to share, email us at hello@stagingevermore.dbdodev.com.