Years ago, I had a professor whose house burned down to the ground, apparently because of a manufacturing flaw in a large Sony CRT TV (and here comes my lawsuit from Sony in 5... 4... 3... 2...). He lost just about everything.
It sounds like someone in Japan figured out that a batch of parts was flawed, and traced that through to these set models. If Sony is trying to underplay this, but there is actually a real risk of fire, and it extends beyond these models or the stated geographic region, and people die, they would get crucified. That scenario could very well be the end of Sony if it came to pass.