Twitter took the new media award, with its use in the post-election protests in Iran and during the Trafigura superinjunction case singled out for praise.
"I was in Iran during the election and the protests afterwards and as the space for use to report got smaller and smaller, the space for citizen journalists grew (…) They used Twitpic and got that information out," said Lindsey Hilsum, international editor for Channel 4 News and judge of the awards.
"[With Trafigura] people got on Twitter, they tweeted and that injunction became meaningless, because the information was already out there."
Brooke, who earlier this week picked up a special prize at the British Press Awards, received a special commendation for her five-year freedom of information campaign to expose details of MPs' expenses. In her acceptance speech she urged journalists in Britain not to become complacent about freedom of expression, but to fight for freedom of information and transparency from government and institutions.
The Guardian Journalism Award went to Radio La Voz, a Peruvian radio station founded in 2007 to broadcast programmes and information on environmental issues and human rights. The station lost its licence in 2009 after the government accused it of "supporting violence against security forces", but the case against the broadcaster last month.
Rashid Hajili, chair of the Media Rights Institute in Azerbaijan, took the Bindmans Law and Campaigning Award for his work defending journalists and freedom of speech in the country. Hajili has represented a number of journalists including Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of the now-closed independent Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azeri-language daily Gündalik Azarbaycan, after his imprisonment by authorities in 2007 for what they the state described as a series of politically motivated criminal charges.
A full list of winners is available at this link.
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