This morning’s Roundup linked to a Houston Chronicle piece that had Ron Artest’s agent denying a statement made by Artest on Twitter as being from a fake account. This would be all well and good, except, uh, it’s not a fake account. And the real fake account said nothing of the sort.

Let me explain.

This is the real Ron Artest on Twitter. This is “Real_Ron_Artest,” a parody concocted by the folks at Style Points.

You can tell them apart by the real Ron’s “Verified Account” symbol, started by Twitter to prevent situations like this, by Real_Ron’s outrageous updates (that frequently feature links to Style Points and other blogs), and, possibly most strangely, the significantly larger follower count Real_Ron boasts. (Also a clue: The use of punctuation in Real_Ron’s statuses.)

This is mostly because Real_Ron is a spot-on send-up of the loopy reaction people expect from the real Artest: He retweets Chinese characters, starts Twitter beef (let’s not call it tweef) with Chad Ochocinco, and makes jokes no one with a seven-figure contract would. The only thing the real fake account tweeted about a deal was an obvious joke.

The point is that it’s painfully easy to see that that Ron isn’t the real one with two seconds of work. But that also begs the question: Do the principals of the Houston Chronicle story not realize that “@96TruwarierQB” is real?

He’s got a verified account, TwitPics that only he could have, and a pitbull of a brother who’s blasted the fake account on multiple occasions.

So when he tweets about signing deals with Circuit City, or the Brooklyn Dodgers, or the Knicks, that’s really Ron Artest being, uh, zany.

This means that Artest’s agent, when he says “That is not Ron’s account. That’s what happens with the so-called new media,” is 1) mistaken about the fake account, 2) too lazy to go see if they were different, or 3) totally lying, and, above all else, hoping that no one will spend the time to unravel the story.

And that means that the Houston Chronicle, by accepting information as is from only Artest’s agent and not doing a little bit of research on Artest’s Twitter presence, is taking what an agent says and reporting it as fact without noting that, well, it is Artest’s Twitter account. It seems disingenuous at best to me, and poor journalism at worst.

Now, if the agent had said Artest’s account had been hacked? Fine. If the Chronicle had reported Artest’s legitimate Twitter account tweeting about a deal and included a quote from his agent denying as much? Okay.

If the Chronicle or any other outlet with paid journalists had written an article like this debunking the fake Artest Twitter?

Well, I wouldn’t have had to write this. But everyone involved might seem a little less dumb.

This isn’t a Twitter story, or a cautionary tale about “new media.” It’s an agent playing fast and loose with the truth, some parodists muddying the waters, and a newspaper lapping up whatever is easiest to report.

And, Ron-Ron? Twitter can help you deal with impersonators and parody accounts. If Alyssa Milano can handle that, you and your team can, too.