This story came out today regarding the plague of all things and al quida, not what you might think at first glance.
Al Q meets the black death
First as I said , is the sun reputable or prone to heavy exageration
Second, if the link is true, where would it be cross referenced , even if a broken clock is right twice a day type deal.
Third , how bad could this be if true.
Declan
The Sun is the UK’s famously disreputable tabloid, but not down to the level of “Elvis is alive and living with Aliens in Atlantis” US supermarket tabloids. There is generally at least a reasonable probability that there is some distorted and exaggerated truth to their stories.
Without a shadow of doubt The Sun is an utter and absolute shower of bollocks.
Mind you they do have a page 3 girl normally with ginormous knockers
The Sun is a tabloid that deals mostly in controversy and celebrity gossip. They aren’t necessarily fiction writers like those of, say, The Weekly World News, but they have exaggerated and stretched the truth in the past. I wouldn’t really call them reliable. Fun, yes. Good for a laugh, definitely. But certainly not reliable by any stretch.
A Google search doesn’t show any outside source for this news. They all seem to just link back to The Sun.
On preview, what everyone else said.
Well so far the beeb with their africa desk have nothing on it, CNN has nothing on their africa desk either.
So either the sun for want of better term is breaking the story, or …
Declan
Plague has never gone away. In 2007 a biologist in the Grand Canyon performed a necroscopy on a mountain lion, and contracted pneumonic plague and died. Bubonic plague is still endemic in many parts of Africa, Asia and North America. It can be treated with modern antibiotics, so the risk of a pandemic or a return of the Black Death are small. Watch the gerbils!
Si
The Super Soaraway Sun doesn’t generally resort to just completely making stuff up - they like to keep their powder dry for special occasions there is a really slow news day and they need some page filler. But they are certainly not known for letting inconvenient facts get in the way of a good story.
I think that’s a pretty good summary, actually.
The Sun, like sedoa says, is fun and good for a laugh, but I wouldn’t take them too seriously. That’s assuming you manage to read past Page 3 in the first place. 
As a source of news, it is not reputable at all.
As a business model, it is at the apex of the Rupert Murdoch media holdings.
You can usually rely on The Sun to get two things correct, the date, and the price
As others have said, the Sun is a shallow newspaper.
It focuses on topless girls, sport, TV, the Royal family, lotteries and attention grabbing headlines.
Just have a look at the side panel from the quoted page…
It doesn’t do research or follow-up stories.
Finally, from the quoted story:
‘It spreads quickly and kills within hours’
‘It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms’
No attempt will ever be made to explain this contradiction.
The Currant Bun is more of a comic than a newspaper. You don’t look for serious news coverage there. Its frequently punning headlines include How Do You Solve A Problem Like Korea? and, when soccer player Dimitar Berbatov was signed for Manchester United Football Club just before the transfer window closed for the season, Gimme Gimme Dimi At Man U By Midnight
And don’t forget, “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious.”
Maybe a good headline but still a crap newspaper.
The Sun, a paper that revels in it’s own ignorance.
You don’t get the democracy you deserve; you get the press you deserve. Reading it alone doesn’t indicate chavness, but it’s certainly a signifier.
The Sun is notorious for printing stories which turn out to have no basis in reality or a very tenuous connection with it. It also rarely prints retractions to inform its readers that it had misinformed them, unless forced to by law suits.
Thus, to answer your question, it is as far from reputable as it is possible to get. It is, in short, a disreputable rag.
The real bottom of the barrel British tabloid is the Daily Star, aimed at people who find the Sun a bit too cerebral. The Mirror is on about the same level as the Sun.
Personally I’d rather read the Sun or Mirror than the supposedly more upmarket Daily Mail and Express, which are vile and despicable rags. At least the Sun doesn’t take itself too seriously, whereas the Mail and Express have a genuinely nasty edge to them.
To the OP:
I personally wouldn’t trust any single source on any news item. Even well respected British newspapers like The Times and The Guardian have printed sensationalised front-page stories on the back of virtually no evidence.
<slightly off-topic rant>
And, I don’t trust science news even if all the newspapers print the same story, since most of them don’t employ a science-writer; they just regurgitate what other newspapers have said.
In the UK there was a story about the MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccine causing autism. All the tabloids got involved in this story, printing article after article on the original study that had implied there was a link, and printing nothing of the multiple, large-scale, rigorous studies that showed no link.
The result has been a big increase in the incidence of measles and mumps in the UK.
</slightly off-topic rant>
Not while the Daily Sport still exists.
This famous quote from “Yes, Prime Minister” comes to min:
“ Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits."