It's not hard to draw a line straight from "influencers" to yellow journalists. They're not that different.

magnolia_mayhem

My sense of Jones is that she doesn't get to where she is without being a real smooth operator.  So my spidey senses tell me that this was probably intentional.  The original decision to send her daughter to bad public schools may not have been this strategic, but writing about it publicly now could be the best recovery move.

SimpleStacker

My take on it was that Jones was simply using her daughter for content, they way too many writers (and even more Youtubers, really) do. But your wife may well be right (and even if it wasn't Jones's intent, it definitely seems like a possible outcome).