Khalisah al-Jilani: Westerlund News Reporter

Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani was a human reporter for Westerlund News, a fixture of the Citadel press corps known for her combative interviewing style. Convinced that the Citadel Council treated humanity as a poor relation, she built her reputation on confrontational questions that appealed to popular human sentiment, and she repeatedly sought out Commander Shepard in pursuit of a story.

A combative correspondent#

Al-Jilani first approached Shepard at the C-Sec Academy on the Citadel, requesting an interview. Her questions began cordially but grew steadily more hostile, and it soon became clear that she was appealing to popular human opinion and was critical of the Council, which she believed treated humanity poorly. She pressed Shepard on whether the Normandy had effectively been handed to the Citadel and whether the Council placed its own requests above humanity's needs, fishing for answers that would prove the Commander was a willing instrument of the Council. How the exchange ended depended on Shepard. The Commander could answer diplomatically, which irritated her, give aggressive replies she grudgingly approved of, calmly recognize her agenda and walk away, or, if provoked far enough, strike her. In some accounts Shepard impressed her with answers emphasizing human strength and independence, drawing the closing remark that it was a good time for strong words.

She sought Shepard out again in 2185, this time near the Dark Star Lounge, returning to the same tactics of loaded questions and selective conclusions, now centered on the Battle of the Citadel and the fate of the Council that had served during it. As before, Shepard could engage her on her own terms, turn the interview to honor those who had died, rebuff her, walk away, or resort to violence.

The Reaper War#

By 2186, with the Reapers descending on the galaxy, al-Jilani came to believe that an anti-human conspiracy was unfolding even amid the catastrophe. She attempted to secure an interview with the Council and was stonewalled, storming off to wait for an audience. She could later be found near the Citadel embassies, where she criticized Shepard for leaving Earth while its people died. The encounter could again take several forms. Depending on their past meetings she might dodge or absorb a blow from the Commander, trade strikes, or, if Shepard had never raised a hand to her, be persuaded that the Commander was doing the right thing and agree to keep asking hard questions in support of the war effort. Whatever passed between them, she made plain that she was glad Shepard stood on humanity's side. During the Cerberus coup attempt on the station, she put her trade to practical use, broadcasting an alert from a Westerlund News van to call C-Sec reinforcements to the Citadel's communication towers.

Beyond the Milky Way#

Al-Jilani's reporting also turned against the Andromeda Initiative before its departure. She compiled a series of pieces antagonizing the venture, treating its goals as an irrelevant vanity project and insinuating sinister motives behind the recruitment of its members. To sharpen one such story she interviewed the Initiative agent Cora Harper, spinning the questions to suggest that Cora had been compromised by living too much among the asari. The interview provoked Cora into a flare of biotic anger, captured by al-Jilani's camera drone, after which the reporter hastily withdrew and later aired a damaging segment that exposed Cora's activities to station security.