chas, I think there are a few factors that might be taken into consideration. One, is that in speaking to people who have been raised in a Europe, I have found that, primarily due to the proximity of and interaction with neighboring countries, Europeans just naturally seem to learn another language. From what I have been told, a second factor is that in most European schools English is a mandatory second language. Another thing to consider is the fact that we do not know how the general populace in any country speaks their own language. For all we know, they may speak their own language as poorly as we speak ours.
I would say that Americans who study a second language enough to be conversant in it probably speak it better than they speak 'English'.

As for what we hear on TV, especially during sports broadcasts, I am often amazed at the fact that the announcers, analysts, etc. are all graduates of prestigious universities - allegedly. And unfortunately, it is not limited to TV or radio. Every day I find typos, poor grammar, misspellings, etc. in our one and only statewide newspaper. In fact, today in a sports article it said "... showing how venerable a team can be", when the writer meant to say "... how vulnerable a team could be".

The shame is, it is only going to get worse, as the younger generations use more and more abbreviations in their texting.
And the fact that many (most?) schools are no longer teaching script opens up a whole new conversation.