The late press critic A. J. Liebling used to say: "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." But a group of independent publishers might amend that today to say press freedom goes first to those who can afford the postage.

They are, in fact, campaigning to repeal a pending increase in periodical postal rates in concert with the First Amendment advocacy group Free Press. And they claim that bigfoot media companies — the Time Warner Inc. conglomerate in particular — stand to benefit the most from higher operating costs that could drive smaller publishing concerns out of business. The federal Postal Regulatory Commission approved the new rate structure in February, and the Postal Service plans to implement it in July. The new system represents an overall rate increase of 11.7 percent for periodical mailers — but Time Warner would face a marginally lower increase of 11.1 percent.

"Whether it was an insidious attempt by a large publisher to put smaller ones out of business, we don't know," says Timothy Karr, Free Press' campaign director. "But it's clear to many of the small publishers that this system unfairly handicaps them and runs counter to the history of the Post Office" — which under the Founders' original conception exists to give citizens an inexpensive means of disseminating information.

Last month, Teresa Stack, president of the liberal weekly The Nation, joined publishers of 15 other small opinion-oriented periodicals, such as The New Republic and National Review, in writing to urge James C. Miller III, the chairman of the Postal Board of Governors, to reconsider the rate structure. (CQ Weekly, which uses the U.S. mail mainly to deliver subscriptions outside the Washington area, did not join that effort but would benefit mildly from retaining the status quo.)

That structure sets out to reward publishers who can reduce Postal Service costs by, for instance, delivering their magazines on palettes (not in bags) already sorted by postal route. Critics say that creates unfair market advantages for the big media companies, who already have their own regional distribution networks in place.

Smaller publishers say they're looking at increases that range from 15 percent for the liberal Roman Catholic journal Commonweal to 23 percent for Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative. Many of these periodicals aren't profitable to begin with, so as contingency measures they're contemplating reducing the quality of their paper stocks or reducing their publishing frequency.

But they're also planning to take their case to Congress. Illinois Democrat Danny K. Davis , who chairs the House Oversight panel with jurisdiction over the Postal Service, has told Free Press he will hold hearings on the issue.

Time Warner says the new rate system was its idea. But James R. O'Brien, vice president of distribution and postal affairs with its periodicals subsidiary, Time Inc., insists the company isn't out to blindside competitors with the new rate structure. Indeed, he says, he's been pushing it openly for the better part of a decade as part of a strategy to cap runaway periodical rate hikes.

"Unless we change as an industry," O'Brien says, "nothing is going to change, and we're going to continue to outpace inflation."

And, he says, smaller publishers needn't suffer in the new scheme. They can team with other publishers to create larger bundles that are cheaper for the Postal Service to process.

"These rates aren't designed to put people out of business," he says. "They are designed to get people to change their behavior and try to take costs out of the system so we all can stay in business."