Hilsum (pictured with Channel 4's Jon Snow, who presented the awards) was up against an all female shortlist, beating BBC World Service South Asia editor Jill McGivering and Financial Times Beijing correspondent Kathrin Hille to the top prize.
Channel 4 took home five prizes in all, winning the Television Award and Environment Award for Unreported World documentaries, the Drama Award for Peter Kosminsky’s series The Promise, and the Children’s Rights Award for Dispatches: Children of Gaza.
Unsurprisingly, the BBC took the Radio Award after holding every nomination on the shortlist. BBC World Service programme India's Micro-credit Meltdown beat competition from the BBC Today Programme's India's Red Rebellion and BBC World Service programme White Horse.
The broadcaster also won the Documentary Award for BBC2's Welcome to Lagos and the Popular Feature's Award for BBC3's Blood, Sweat and Luxuries: Gold and E-Waste.
The Guardian held all three nominations in the Press Award category, with Jonathan Steele's G2 feature Real Life Inside Helmand beating competition from Peter Beaumont's Haiti: What happened next? in the Observer and Joe Sacco's The Unwanted in the Guardian Weekend.
This year's awards featured a new Student Prize which went to National Film and Television School student Ling Lee for documentary film Miles Apart.
The New Media Award went to the National Film Board of Canada for Highrise – Out My Window, which beat citizen press agency Demotix and the Shoot Nations project.
Last year's Journalist of the Year award went to Sunday Times Africa correspondant Dan McDougall.
See the full list of 2011 winners at this link.
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