On Jan. 24, a journalist in Singapore received flak for his "unprofessionalism" and lack of empathy.

This was after he pestered Singaporean actress Jayley Woo over WhatsApp to talk about her recently deceased boyfriend, actor Aloysius Pang.

And it has not gone down well.

Angry reactions only

On the same day, netizens then supposedly managed to uncover the journalist's identity via whatever hints they derived from the Instastories.

And these netizens showed no qualms confronting the journalist who allegedly had that conversation with Woo.

They zoomed in on Instagram page belonging to that journalist, by actively calling his actions out.

Among the comments, there is a thread where the journalist himself replied, although he neither admitted nor denied that it was him who sent Woo those messages over WhatsApp.

Here's a translation of the Chinese words:

ahbu99: Hope you were not the reporter who insisted in conducting an interview

drolmama: @ahbu99 It's him.

h********* (owner of the account): @ahbu99 There is no way for a journalist to insist, you can only fight for it again and again.

ahbu99: I feel that as a journalist, even though reporting is needed, it's also important to be empathetic. Celebrities are humans as well.

h*********: That's right. But a journalist's responsibility is to seek verification, and not just re-cover (content), isn't that so?

ahbu99: If that's the case, celebrities won't have any rights to privacy. I'm not saying you're wrong, but if the same thing happened to your family, would you spill everything to the journalists?

redicurious: @h********* That's strange then, even as you didn't get verification, didn't you go ahead and run a long report? What about your responsibility as someone with an upbringing? What have you done? Didn't you re-cover the news in the end anyway, and before that you were so insistent (on getting Woo to talk), was it necessary?

cantrelatetoanything: Do you have any human decency?

librat84: @h********* If you applied the same spirit to Mindef and win justice for everyone, you might even be immortalised. When the private conversation was made public, it was really disadvantageous for you. It's a pity that even without you, someone else would do the same thing too.

auberiginepinkerbell: "fight for it again and again", saying it like you're so noble, like you're fulfilling some life mission. Was your conscience eaten by a dog?

Other comments included profanities and personal insults.

At time of writing, there are 359 comments on his latest post, the majority from angry commenters.

Wading into the fray is local influencer Xiaxue, who also expressed herself on this matter, after extending her condolences to Pang's family and friends.

She called the journalist out for pretending to serve a noble purpose, but he was also after a scoop: