Fred Hiatt

The National Journal reported in November, 2014, that Hiatt had offered his resignation to Jeff Bezos, the new owner of The Post, but had been retained.

In December 2009, Hiatt was a featured speaker at the Tokyo Foundation conference entitled "Japan after the Change: Perspectives of Western Opinion Leaders". In October 2010, he moderated a panel on US-Russia relations at the Center for American Progress, a progressive public policy think tank. In 2011, he was a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and a moderator of the "Asianomics" session of the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, South Korea.

During this time The Post has also taken traditionally conservative or neoconservative positions on several major issues: economically, it has defended a Republican initiative to allow Social Security personal retirement accounts, and has advocated for several free trade agreements. With respect to foreign policy, it supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, penning by PBS journalist Bill Moyers' count 27 editorials in favor of the war in the six months preceding the invasion. On environmental issues, The Post supported the controversial Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline, and Hiatt himself came under fire for refusing to hold Post columnist George F. Will accountable for misrepresenting scientific evidence in a column in which Will attacked the veracity of global warming. The column drew criticism from several other Post columnists, The Post's scientific reporters, and The Post's ombudsman, as well as from environmental scientists and climatologists.

In 2000, following the death of long-time editor Meg Greenfield and a short interim editorship under Stephen S. Rosenfeld, Hiatt was named editorial page editor. Hiatt's tenure as editorial page editor has been during a period of national losses in circulation and readership for newspapers. Daily circulation has fallen 41% from 787,000 in 2000 to 467,000 in 2012 while Sunday circulation has fallen 46 percent from 1,076.000 to 688,000.

In 1996, Hiatt joined The Post's editorial board. In 1999 Hiatt was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for what the prize committee called "his elegantly-written editorials urging America's continued commitment to international human rights issues."

Hiatt is the author of The Secret Sun: A Novel of Japan, which was published in 1992, as well as two books for children, If I Were Queen of the World (1997) and Baby Talk (1999). In April 2013, his first novel for young adult audiences, Nine Days, was published. It follows two fictional teenagers on a journey to free an imprisoned Chinese dissident; while the protagonists are fictional, the prisoner and his story are based in reality.

Hiatt first reported for the Atlanta Journal and the Washington Star. When the latter ceased publication in 1981, Hiatt was hired by the Washington Post. At the Post, Hiatt initially reported on government, politics, development and other topics in Fairfax County and statewide in Virginia. Later, after joining the newspaper’s national staff, he focused on military and national security affairs. From 1987 to 1990, he and his wife served as co-bureau chiefs of the Post's Tokyo bureau. Following this, from 1991 to 1995, the couple served as correspondents and co-bureau chiefs in Moscow. While there, Hiatt played an unlikely role of International Monetary Fund 'representative' Baron Domenic in Karen Shakhnazarov's Dreams (1993).

Hiatt was born in Washington, DC. He is the son of Howard Haim Hiatt, a medical researcher and former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Doris Bieringer, a librarian who co-founded a reference publication for high school libraries. His maternal grandfather, Walter H. Bieringer, served as president of the United Service for New Americans which helped to resettle European Jews in the United States after World War II. He graduated from Harvard University in 1977. Hiatt is married to Washington Post editor and writer Margaret "Pooh" Shapiro; they live in Chevy Chase, Maryland and have three children: Joseph, Alexandra, and Nathaniel.

Frederick Samuel "Fred" Hiatt (born April 30, 1955) is the editorial page editor of The Washington Post. He also writes editorials for the page, as well as a biweekly column that appears on Mondays.

The Post's editorial board prior to Hiatt's appointment was described by then-editor Meg Greenfield as collectively having "the sensibility of 1950s liberals," by which she meant that it was generally conservative on foreign policy and national defense and generally liberal on social issues.