Noxious– physically harmful, poisonous or destructive. Merriam-Webster’s adds “constituting a harmful influence on mind or behavior.”
Writing boastfully of his administration in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson had this to say about newspapers;
“The people are nearly all united; their quondam leaders, infuriated with the sense of their impotence, will soon be seen or heard only in newspapers, which serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.”
Jefferson didn’t like newspapers or reporters. He also said, “I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.”