The grovelling of the prime minister and the second in line to the throne before Fifa's Zurich racket has been a national humiliation. Had they no intelligence of what was going on? Had this exposure to ridicule not been risk-assessed? Even a cursory glance at the allegations from the Sunday Times and the BBC's Panorama would have warned Downing Street and the Palace that these were not fit people for Britain's leaders to be seen glad-handing. The business recalls the obeisance to certain Italian gentlemen once required of American presidential candidates.

The one leader to emerge from the World Cup farrago with credit is, of all people, Russia's Vladimir Putin, who wisely decided that the Zurich shenanigans were beneath his dignity. Depths to which the Russian prime minister is not prepared to stoop are deep indeed. But then he probably already knew he had won. Why did Britain not know? Why does David Cameron now react with a solemnity more appropriate for a terrorist outrage or a natural disaster?

The abasement of Cameron and Prince William is equalled only by the shocking behaviour of England's World Cup team, in rubbishing journalists investigating Fifa corruption as "unpatriotic" and "embarrassing". Who are these people, and what values do they represent? With six Fifa officials already sacked and clouds hovering over at least three of those voting in the bid race, Britain should have had no dealings with Fifa over the World Cup until it cleansed its stables. If that "damaged" a bid, more credit to Britain. Surely honesty comes before sport.

The problem, of course, is that sport turns the heads of grown men and warps their moral compass. Tony Blair, Lord Coe and Tessa Jowell behaved like besotted groupies before the self-serving tycoons of the 2005 International Olympic Committee, who proceeded to dun the British taxpayer of £9bn to stage their two-week festival of self-glorification. Football's World Cup at least makes money for its host nation. But what other British industry (besides weapons) can demand the time and humiliation of politicians and royalty to this degree, and in so obviously contaminated a process?

These international bodies know no accountability. Their sole enemy is disclosure. Governments, diplomats, officials, contractors – all have a vested interest in secrecy, as millions of pounds passes from national taxpayers in opaque "payments to international organisations", and then out to the NGOs and consultants who form an outer ring of cheerleaders. Their staffs owe loyalty only to their bank balances and jobs for life. Their income, as we saw in the secret settlement of Switzerland's Fifa-linked ISL fraud trial, receives little scrutiny. These are not servants of sport, just very rich men cleverly playing on national pride.

I have no illusions about the press. I have watched enough dirt swilling down the journalistic sewer to abandon any quest therein for responsibility, accuracy, sensitivity or humility. The great American editor Oz Elliott once lectured graduates at the Columbia School of Journalism on their sacred duty to democracy as the unofficial legislators of mankind. He asked me what I thought of it. I said it was no good to me: I was trained as a reptile lurking in the gutter whose sole job was to "get the bloody story".

Yet journalism's stock-in-trade is disclosure. As we have seen this week with WikiLeaks, power loathes truth revealed. Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure. As Jefferson remarked, the press is the last best hope when democratic oversight fails, as it does in the case of most international bodies.

I found myself chastised this week for my defence of WikiLeaks, on the ground that thieves should not revel in their crime by demanding that victims be more careful with their property. But in matters of public policy who is thieving what from whom? The WikiLeaks material was left by a public body, the US state department, like a wallet open on a park bench, except that in this case the wallet was full of home truths about the mendacity of public policy.

Of course diplomacy between nations – over sport or whatever – cannot be conducted entirely in the open. Some secrets must be protected. But American secrets shared with 2 million people authorised to see them are hardly secrets. The content of the WikiLeaks cables cannot have surprised anyone in the know, least of all the foreign intelligence agencies that must long have been reading them.

What is intriguing is the hysteria of power at seeing its inner beliefs and processes revealed. The denunciation of WikiLeaks as an "attack on America" from the political right is similar to the attitude of England's football authorities towards the Sunday Times and the BBC. Someone had broken wind in church. Truth briefly swept aside the deceptions of public form and left reality exposed. The players in a once subtle game that had fallen to lying and cat-calling were suddenly told to stop, pull themselves together and look each other in the eye. As the great Donald Rumsfeld said, stuff happens. The air is cleared.

The same goes for Fifa, whose processes cannot even plead national security. Its murk may now be investigated as disappointed nations seek redress. England's sports administrators will doubtless accuse the Sunday Times and the BBC of wrecking their bid – though its goose was clearly cooked long ago. These are officials who tried to sweep under the carpet the bungs and kick-backs by which their sport was fuelled, and who turn a blind eye to the sources of football's Russian and Arab wealth.

They may now take consolation in finding out how they were beaten. That will come only from a free and active journalism. In the case of WikiLeaks it was journalism that censored vulnerable names and sources from what the state department was widely disseminating. It was journalism that mediated and interpreted the raw data. It was journalism, and journalism alone, that investigated alleged corruption at Fifa.

Journalism has revealed the antics of drugs companies, the mistakes of climate change scientists, the depths of police misbehaviour, the tax-dodging and theft by British MPs and the City's bonus culture. Nobody else did. When the public interest is undermined by the lies and paranoia of power, it is disclosure that takes sanity by the scruff of its neck and sets it back on its feet.

So thank goodness for disclosure. Thank goodness for journalism. I am sorry we did not get the World Cup but, had we done so, it would have been mired in claims of dishonesty. In losing, we had the honour of seeing British journalism doing something to clean up a disreputable sport. That is the cup I would prefer to win.

• This article was amended on 3 December 2010. The original referred to Britain's World Cup Team, Britain's football authorities and Britain's sports administrators. These have all been corrected.