The “mafia” phenomenon, neither active nor perceived in the same way on both sides of the Alps, is treated differently by the French and Italian media: the definition of “the mafia” entered the Italian penal Code in 1982 when it was precisely defined. By contrast, it is not yet officially recognized in France. This article proposes to show how the asymmetrical treatment by the media of this criminal organization from one country to the other is a symptom and a cause of a difference in collective perception, among citizens, and in political choices, from the point of view of institutions. The Italian mafia is a source of myth and fantasy fed by a broad array of artistic productions, both in literature and in cinema, which generate the proliferation of stereotypes inspired by reality. The profusion of fictional representations of the mafia has led to the importation into the French language of a large number of related Italian terms and expressions on the subject, by means of borrowings and neologisms frequently relayed by the media. An inadequate contextualization of these terms exposes them to the risk of a semantic shift. In this article, we examine a selection of about sixty articles from the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro and Libération in order to analyze the way journalists cover a phenomenon that is apprehended differently in France and in Italy from a cultural point of view. A comparison between the terminological treatment of the “mafia” by the French press at the end of the 19th century and by the press of today will reveal the persistence of exoticization processes used by journalists, leading to a reflection on the impact of language on the perception of social phenomena and on the political implications of terminological choices.