From evening arrests on the M6 to the vehicle in flames outside Glasgow airport, the events of the past three days have highlighted the role members of the public play in reporting news as it unfolds.

Rolling news channels and newspapers published scores of videos and images taken on mobile phones and digital cameras by so-called citizen journalists.

Many of the images have already been collected by police to help in their inquiries.

The BBC said that it had received more than 70 photographs and videos of the burning Jeep Cherokee that ploughed into the front of Glasgow Airport.

Because most passengers at the airport would have been carrying cameras with which to record their holidays there was no shortage of footage.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “The quality has been exceptional. When it came to the Haymarket attack, quantity was not as high as with other things, such as the Yorkshire floods, because of the time in the morning the attack occurred.

“As ever, contributions from the public of this kind play a valuable part in helping to report on unfolding stories.”

The first photograph of the failed car-bomb attack on the Tiger Tiger nightclub, in Haymarket, Central London, is thought to have netted the amateur photographer in excess of £20,000.

The 17-year-old captured a grainy image of a gas canister perched on the pavement behind the light green Mercedes. Newspapers paid in the region of £2,000 each to run the photograph.

Further images that came to light yesterday were grainy mobile phone footage of revellers leaving the nightclub earlyon Friday morning, and a succession of police cars speeding down the M6 in Cheshire, where a man and a woman were arrested.

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