The police tried to prosecute them for broadcasting "material likely to stir up racial hatred".
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would toughen the penalties for broadcasting material deemed indecent, though that action closely followed the Jackson-SuperBowl breast-flap and the Senate has yet to act.
Fahmy was one of the three Al-Jazeera English journalists who were handed three-year jail terms on Saturday for broadcasting material deemed "harmful to Egypt" following the 2013 military coup.
Wagenaar criticized De Vries for broadcasting the material, stating that the broadcast made it harder to obtain a conviction, and had De Vries turned over the material to the authorities without broadcasting it, they would have held "all the trumps" in questioning Van der Sloot.
"Radio and television waves are public property and the companies who profit from using the public airwaves should face meaningful fines for broadcasting indecent material," said Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican and author of the bill.
Last month, Clear Channel agreed to pay more than $700,000 in penalties for broadcasting sexually explicit material on four stations, which carried a program called "Bubba the Love Sponge".
For instance, in November, ABC News, The Washington Post and The New York Post cited his startling discovery that the fine against Fox and its affiliates for broadcasting "sexually suggestive" material in a show called "Married by America" (for a segment that involved whipped cream and spankings) was prompted, in the end, by only three people.
His show drew the threat of a fine from the Federal Communications Commission for broadcasting graphic and sexually explicit material.
Earlier this week, Clear Channel fired Todd Clem, host of the "Bubba the Love Sponge" program, which faces a $755,000 Federal Communications Commission fine for broadcasting graphic and sexually explicit material in Florida.
June 2008: MTV was fined £255,000 by Ofcom for broadcasting "highly offensive language and material" pre-watershed on its suite of channels.
The Arabic-language Al Jazeera was condemned by the American government a decade ago for broadcasting videotapes from Osama bin Laden and other materials deemed to be terrorist propaganda.
