How to get a company’s perspective when no one will talk to you

By Laura Schulte, Wisconsin Health Journalism Fellow

At his Health Journalism 2025 lightning talk in May, NBC News enterprise and investigative reporter Tyler Kingkade said there’s always a way to get a story, even when a company or entity won’t speak with you. 

Kingkade was part of the team that uncovered how cadavers in Texas and other states were essentially selling bodies for parts, in a NBC series titled “Dealing the Dead.” The series won first place in the Business category of AHCJ’s 2024 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.

His reporting started with talking to family members who found out that a loved one had passed and their body was donated to science without notifying the next of kin. After telling those stories and not hearing from the entities involved with the body trade — Boston Scientific and the University of Texas Sciences Center — Kingkade sought another way in. 

He started requesting public records featuring the names of the reporters working on the story and the name of the outlet, NBC. 

“In short, it ended up revealing a whole internal chain of emails from Boston Scientific because they had reached out to UNT once we contacted them and asked them, ‘Do you know that you’ve been using unclaimed bodies?’ They did not,” he said.

Kingkade ended up with access to emails between attorneys and clients and all kinds of messages regarding the PR strategy that both UNT and Boston Scientific employed when the journalists were working on the story. In the end, NBC was able to publish a story that relied mostly on those communications, and no longer depended on the “no comment” answer from officials. 

Kingkade and his team ended up uncovering a sad and unsavory story about what happens with unclaimed bodies, and how families and loved ones are impacted in the process, and how institutions profit. 

He ended his talk with one piece of advice, after recommending that journalists “Go FOIA themselves.” 

“It’s a reminder,” he said. “Anything could be on the front page of the New York Times when you send an email.”

Laura Schulte is a staff writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covering government.