Ackman disses WSJ’s Freddie/Fannie coverage

Activist investor Bill Ackman was critical of The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae during a conference call on Monday, writes Julia LaRoche of Business Insider.

LaRoche writes, “During the Q&A portion of the call, Ackman said that he loves the Wall Street Journal and that he reads it every day. However, he thinks that the ‘Heard On The Street’ section has the ‘most factually inaccurate’ and ‘frankly embarrassing’ articles about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He called the section’s coverage a ‘disaster.’

Ackman is a shareholder of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and thinks with the right reforms — like eliminating some lines of business — they could be worth much more. Heard on the Street columnist John Carney (a former Business Insider editor) has written several times this year that the companies aren’t living up to those hopes.

“‘It will likely take a few more quarters before reality seeps into the valuation models of fund managers dreaming of a Fannie windfall,’ he wrote in a May column after Fannie Mae’s quarterly results.