Baroness Joan Bakewell has won the prestigious Sandford St Martin Trustees' Award for religious broadcasting.

The Labour peer and former BBC journalist will collect the award at a ceremony at Lambeth Palace on June 8. In a statement ahead of the awards, the Sandford St Martin Trust said the award was "in recognition of her outstanding commitment to religious and ethical broadcasting over six decades".

Bakewell made her career as a television presenter for the BBC2 programme Late Night Line Up and went on to present BBC1's Heart of the Matter from 1988 to 2000. The programme explored issues around belief and ethics.

One of her former editors Roger Bolton, who is a Sandford St Martin trustee, praised her "cool precision, intelligent understanding and great sympathy for those caught up in difficult dilemmas".

Bakewell was also a radio presenter for BBC Radio 3's series Belief and BBC Radio 4's Inside the Ethics Committee and became President of Birkbeck College in April 2013.

Now a Labour peer in the House of Lords, Bakewell uses her position to ensure "debates about ethics cut to the heart of the matter", Bolton said.

The award will be presented by the Classics professor Mary Beard, who is also a friend of Bakewell. Beard said: "Joan deserves this award because of her long contribution to serious, compassionate, ethical broadcasting – facing difficult issues in an approachable but never simplifying way."

The Sandford St Martin Trust has organised annual awards for broadcast programmes about religion, ethics and spirituality since 1978 and introduced the Trustees' Award in 2013 to "recognise significant contribution to religious understanding in the media or the arts". Previous winners have included Professor Simon Schama, Ian Hislop, David Suchet and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.