The U.S. Postal Service is about to implement a massive hike in its rates for magazines that would put diverse and free speech at risk. Postal regulators have decided to adopt a plan that favors the nation’s largest publishers, like Time Warner and Hearst, while unfairly burdening thousands of smaller and independent magazines with much higher postal rates, as high as 20 or 30 percent.

The plan to give Big Media lower rates was submitted by Time Warner, the nation’s largest publisher, according to Timothy Karr, Campaign Director for FreePress.Net.

“We were stunned when postal regulators chose the Time Warner plan – with little apparent hard research on how the plan would affect small publishers – instead of another proposal made by the Postal Service itself that would have imposed an equal increase on all publishers,” Karr said in a press release. “If implemented, the Time Warner plan could push many smaller publications to the brink of bankruptcy.”

America’s founding fathers understood that the First Amendment would be worth little without a postal system that encouraged broad public participation in America’s marketplace of ideas. To ensure that a diversity of viewpoints were available to “the whole mass of the people,” they created affordable postal rates that gave smaller political journals a voice.

The rate increase reverses this egalitarian ideal. It threatens the democratic discourse that our founding fathers fostered through the U.S. mail system.

FreePress.Net in urging postal regulators and Congress to convene public hearings, investigate how these rate increases were decided in what seems to be an unfair and unorthodox way, and reverse the ruling.

With help from the people, FreePress.Net says we can stop this decision and restore the postal system that has served free speech in America so well.

For more information, see FreePress.Net.

© 2007, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.