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ICFA Responds to Misleading
U.S. News & World Report Article
On March 5, 2002, the ICFA sent the following letter to the editor of U.S. News & World Report in response to an article industry regulation.
Letter to the Editor
U.S. News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007
Re: "Burial Plots," 3/11 Edition
To the Editor:
It is with regret we note that "Yellow Journalism" is alive and well in the pages of your publication. The article, "Burial Plots," by Kit R. Roane, juxtaposes some highly anecdotal accounts with some general comments by state regulators and - presto - a national scandal is fabricated. Even the objective findings by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) citing the low volume of consumer complaints against cemeteries and funeral homes is manipulated to sound ominous. The GAO noted that there was no central repository of complaints, concluding that the low complaint volume could be overstated as well as understated. Your coverage seriously skewed those findings by abbreviating them.
Perhaps the most glaring error is the statement, "Mortuaries, cemeteries, and crematories are notoriously underregulated." As this Association has stated in testimony submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, relevant state laws regulating the industry number approximately 10,000 pages in length, and a summary of citations to those laws numbers about 30 pages. In addition, a simple listing of citations to the federal laws and regulations applicable to cemeteries, funeral homes, and crematories runs almost three pages in length. Whatever the problem, to claim that industry members are underregulated is just plain wrong.
The real focus should center on the level of enforcement by state agencies and the need to fill gaps in laws and regulations. The Georgia cremation scandal is an inspection issue that industry model laws and guidelines have long addressed. For example, this Association published twenty-seven Model Guidelines for State Laws and Regulations some years ago and continues to circulate these documents to governmental agencies and officials. The Guidelines address a variety of consumer protection issues on a straightforward and practical level including a
state-administered Consumer Guarantee Fund. The difference between our respective publications is that ours advocates solutions, yours promotes fear-mongering. Your readers deserve better than that.
Very truly yours,
Robert M. Fells
External Chief Operating Officer
and General Counsel
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