Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Create a newsflash module.
2. Set it to order results by publish date, created date, or modified date.
3. Set direction to descending.

Expected result

Most recently published, created, or modified article shown first.

Actual result

Oldest article shown first (direction is set to ascending only).

System information (as much as possible)

Joomla 3.9.16
PHP 7.3.1

Additional comments

It's possibly ignoring which articles were modified more recently too.