Diana Allers: Alliance War Correspondent

Diana Allers was a human war correspondent for the Alliance News Network and a familiar face on its program Battlespace. Born in Milgrom on the colony world of Bekenstein, she considered herself a colony kid, and when the Reapers fell upon the galaxy she set out to report the war from as close to its front lines as she could reach. To that end she sought a place aboard the Normandy, where she could chronicle the conflict alongside the crew said to be at its center.

A reporter from the colonies#

Allers came from Milgrom on Bekenstein and spoke of herself as a colony kid. By the time of the Reaper War she had become a war correspondent for the Alliance News Network and a regular contributor to its program Battlespace, building a reputation as a reporter willing to go where the fighting was. She tended to close her broadcasts with a steady sign off, urging her audience to stay strong, and she carried herself as a journalist of firm and often outspoken convictions.

Allers first appeared aboard the Citadel, where she could be found pressing a Normandy crewman for information. When she approached Commander Shepard she asked to be taken aboard as an embedded journalist, arguing that her coverage could shape how the wider galaxy saw the commander's conduct. Whether she was granted the berth lay with Shepard.

Aboard the Normandy#

If accepted, Allers took up residence in the Normandy's starboard cargo bay and worked to aid the war effort through her reporting for as long as she remained aboard. Shepard could steer the thrust of her coverage, asking her either to rally support for a besieged Earth or to expose the methods of Cerberus. Following her commander's lead, she filed stories on Reaper assaults against human worlds and on the terrorist organization's subterfuge, including the attack on Grissom Academy, the role of the assassin Kai Leng in an attempt to seize the Citadel, and the true horrors of the Cerberus facility at Sanctuary.

There were stories Allers would not, or could not, tell. The single greatest discovery of the age was placed beyond her reach, and she declined to report on the return of the rachni or on certain matters touching her sizable asari audience, mindful of how quickly opinion could turn against an unpopular subject. She and the Normandy's communications specialist, Samantha Traynor, often traded words over the intercom between operations.

Interviews and aftermath#

After several major operations Allers sought interviews with Shepard, questioning the commander on the state of the krogan, on the security of the Citadel after a Cerberus strike against it, and on the fate of the geth and the quarians following the campaign at Rannoch. Depending on how Shepard answered and on the commander's other entanglements, the relationship between reporter and soldier could become a personal one, conducted in secret to protect Allers' career.

Had Shepard refused her a place aboard the Normandy, Allers instead embedded with the Alliance dreadnought SSV Shasta. A later news report from the Citadel announced that the Shasta had been destroyed in the Horse Head Nebula, killing everyone aboard, Allers among them, and that she had left a substantial bequest to a school of journalism on her homeworld.