Malcolm
I think that if you went though the post loss radio signals analysis
http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg/signalcatalog.html, you would see that TIGHAR has pretty much discounted the likely hoaxers. While there are a few interesting outliers on harmonic frequencies, what emerges is that the pattern of receptions is largely localized to professional and military radio operators in the Pacific. That would argue that the transmitter was also in the Pacific somewhere transmitting on AE's frequency - a US civil aviation frequency - and sounding like her. It also removes the "bad behavior of the press" factor as the operators in the Pacific were just doing their job, not reacting to the press.
The important thing is that if only one of the 200+ transmissions was authentic, she had to be on land somewhere in a reasonably intact aircraft.
The direction finding bearings converging in the vicinity of Nikumaroro only enhances the story as there is only so much land out there - Kiribati has probably less than 100 sq miles of land in a million sq miles of ocean - so to have the bearings converge anywhere near land instead of out in the open ocean would seem to be meaningful, would you not agree?
If you are willing to consider "a couple as evidence of possible post-loss survival" then you are essentially agreeing that there is evidence she successfully landed the aircraft on land and was able to transmit. Where? is the question.
If we agree there is evidence she made it to land, what kind of island are we looking for? Shouldn't we be looking for an island within fuel range, with some sort of navigational logic as to how she would have gotten there, near the convergence of the DF bearings taken at the time, with a known history of a castaway who apparently had items with them such as a sextant box likely to have once been in the US Navy inventory and similar to one FN was known to use as a back up, an island with native myths of aircraft wreckage otherwise un-accounted for in the same location as a contemporaneous photo shows an unusual landing gear shaped object on the reef, one that has yielded aircraft parts that seem consistent with the Lockheed Electra i.e. the aircraft skin without zinc chromate, plexiglass, and dado, an island with archaeological artifacts who's origin seem consistent with a mid to late 1930's US female camping out, wearing shoes, and eating stuff in ways that pacific islanders don't?
I think we've found one of those islands, but evidently you are not yet convinced Nikumaroro is a good place to look. What else would you expect of an island she landed on? How many other candidates are there? If not Nikumaroro, then on what island would you start your search? Based upon what thought process?
If the post loss signals, or at least one of them, indicate "evidence of possible post loss survival", doesn't the rest of the research we've done, taken as a body of evidence, take on additional relevance? Still circumstantial until we find something better, but aren't most archaeological conclusions based upon a preponderance of circumstantial evidence rather than a single smoking gun?
Andrew