PARIS — The rumors had been out there for years: A private Facebook group that included many up-and-coming French male journalists was behind waves of online insult, mockery and harassment aimed at women in the business.

Now, with confirmation that a group that called itself the Ligue du LOL existed, it is a moment of reckoning about sexism in the French news media, an insular and still male-dominated industry in a country where the #MeToo movement has met with some resistance.

Some of the men behind the group, whose name means the League of LOL, have issued apologies, and several have been suspended from their jobs.

In one case, a member of the group made a pornographic photo montage of a feminist writer and circulated it on Twitter. In another, a member of the group made a prank phone call to a woman, pretending to be a media executive with a job offer, and then put the conversation online.