In an episode of the British TV series Death in Paradise, one of the police mentions that some notes written in shorthand might indicate that the writer was a journalist. (I couldn’t identify the episode, and the point was very minor in the plot. The glimpse of the notebook looked like it might have been Pitman. The show is set on a Caribbean island, and is quite modern, with the police using computers and cell phones.)
I am guessing that the use of recording devices in a courtroom may often be prohibited, as are cameras. But is it true that journalists often use shorthand? Now or ever? If so, how do they learn it? Who teaches it? The TV show, of course, is utter fiction.