I am following this with great interest. A swift response to the Washington Post seems appropriate!
I think that one reason why David's hypothesis does not get the interest it deserves is that the explanation is necessarily long and involved, and the people who need to take it on board are neither engineers nor pilots and have short attention spans. .David's logic, narrative, and writing style is excellent, but Mr. Average wants a summary that catches his interest and tells the story in a few sentences, even at the expense of being slightly economical with the truth........
For example - "The facts are that an aircraft thought to the Electra was discovered in the jungle in PNG in 1945, but was ignored in the wartime situation. New research into the flight shows that Earhart had a contingency return-to-base plan if she got lost, and the aircraft was carrying just enough fuel to do that."
You may be able to improve on that, but if you all want to email it to the Washington Post or anyone else, be my guest.