Here's the full text of what you said. It's what we're talking about:

> There was also the tragic story of the Cambridge professor who was completely unqualified and had a fake life story. When journalists would get close to the story he would report them to the police for harassment to spike the stories.

You don't mention the threat that civil lawsuits pose to speech at all. And yet it was the threat of a civil lawsuit that actually quelled speech here.

You have no evidence that action A ("he would report them to the police for harassment") led to outcome B ("to spike the stories").

Jason Arday did not spike any journalist's story by reporting them for harrassment. He, or his universty, did spike the story by engaging reputation lawyers. He could do that in almost any country, including the US, despite its stronger free speech laws. Unless a US state has an effective anti-SLAPP law, it is very likely all that is needed to shut people up is to threaten a lawsuit they can't afford.

The thing you want to be mad about -- the police unlawfully instructing a journalist not to contact someone -- is a bad thing, is not even legal (i.e. the UK state doesn't actually allow it, let alone condone it), and it had no effect on the journalist. They still wanted their story published. It was the private threat of a lawsuit that spiked it.